


Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions

by Camellia Cook (thekurosakiconundrum)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Denial, Dirty Talk, Falling In Love, Feelings, General Depravity, Hux is Not Nice, Hux is So Thirsty And He Hates It, In Fact They Are Both Awful, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, M/M, Medium-speed burn, Space YouTube, The One Thousand Sexual Fantasies Of Armitage Hux, UST, Unrepentant Villains, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2019-06-09 21:42:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15276801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekurosakiconundrum/pseuds/Camellia%20Cook
Summary: When a clever technician leaks some footage of Supreme Leader Ren leading a boarding action on an enemy ship and looking like a complete badass while doing it onto theFinalizer'sinternal network, the video goes viral and comes to General Hux's attention. It might actually be beneficial to leave it up for the sake of improving morale in the wake of Snoke's death, but first Hux has to take a look and make sure it's fit for public consumption.He doesn't expect to be quite so impressed... Or quite so turned on.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: The basic plot of this story involves Hux getting off on watching Kylo kill people. So if that's not your thing, turn back now.
> 
>  
> 
> Also I'm new to this fandom (why now? no one knows), so I apologize for any mistakes related to my lack of Star Wars knowledge! Please feel free to correct me.

“General Hux, sir?”Lieutenant Geroe asked, flagging him down on his way back from lunch.

She sounded nervous, which was… far from ideal, given that she was in charge of monitoring their internal holonet. Already feeling tired, he replied, “Yes, Geroe?”

“There’s been a leak, sir—some footage from the assault on the Aravaanian cruiser day before last. Technical dowloaded all their data as per your request, including their internal security logs, and now there’s a vid from it circulating among the crew and the Troopers today. I haven’t yet established who the culprit was, but it seems apparent that one of the techies reviewing the footage for any sign of the rebels extracted material from several cameras, edited it, and uploaded it.”

Hux frowned. “You’ve taken it down, I assume?”

“I’m trying, sir,” Geroe responded. “But it’s very popular, so it’s a little difficult to chase down every copy. Commander Key is writing a program to do so at this very moment.”

He frowned harder. It was that difficult to remove something all in one fell swoop? Seemed like a design flaw. “Other than its existence in the first place, I take it there’s no obvious security breach in this vid, or you would have informed me sooner. What is its subject?”

“The Supreme Leader, sir,” Geroe answered, scrunching in on herself a little. She knew—everyone knew, despite his attempts to hide it—how little he enjoyed hearing any sort of news about _that man._ “You recall he insisted upon leading the boarding action himself. The vid is of him fighting in the corridors, cutting down about forty armed men with his lightsaber.”

Interesting. “You say this vid is popular?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Lots of approving commentary; from the Troopers, especially. Everyone aboard this ship knows of Supreme Leader Ren’s prowess in battle, but few of us have seen it firsthand before now. They’re impressed.”

“Send me a copy, Lieutenant, and don’t run Key’s program until you hear from me. I may decide to leave the vidup for the purpose of increasing morale. However, I want that culprit found. Leaks, even ultimately beneficial ones, are not to be tolerated. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir! Right away sir!’ Geroe promised, saluting smartly before scurrying off.

If he did leave the vid up, he’d have to somehow communicate that its sharing had been on his orders while still having the culprit quietly punished. It sounded like a pain in the ass, and he wanted to say that PR was the least of his concerns right now, but quite frankly, that wasn’t true. It was still entirely possible that the Order would collapse in the wake of Snoke’s death, and so for the time being, he had to make that idiot Ren look as good as possible until somebody more competent (possibly even himself, he was still undecided on this matter) came along. Perhaps he should appoint someone to pursue the improvement of Ren’s reputation full time—it was certainly a full time job.

At the moment, though, it was down to him.

His datapad pinged as he received the message from Geroe, and he ducked into a nearby conference room to watch this infamous footage.

Hux raised an eyebrow—the video was 1 minute 47 seconds long. Not much time to take down forty men. Preparing himself to be nonetheless underwhelmed (Ren had never failed to disappoint,) he pressed ‘play.’

The first thing he noticed was the music. This security breaching idiot had apparently decided that since the clips were merely soundless surveillance footage, he ought to put some music to it to make it ‘cooler.’ Hux rolled his eyes. Anyone who thought Kylo Ren was cool had irredeemably bad taste. He recognized the opening strains of the song, it was a favorite among a certain set of Troopers at the moment, all loud, brash strings, a driving too-fast beat, and atonal wailing. Hux thought the whole genre was a waste of sound waves; to him, the growling, grinding cacophony sounded like a parody of menace, the kind of thing that a twelve-year-old boy who thought he was so hard might enjoy. It suited Ren after all, he thought nastily, and then chided himself for feeling a sharp twist of satisfaction at a silent jab at a man who wasn’t even there. Such were the heights of pettiness the Supreme Leader drove him to. He turned the sound off, and then turned it back on again on low volume because he wanted to be able to evaluate the full experience of the vid.

The first shot showed a closed airlock, the camera lingering over it as the introduction of the song slowly built, until it crumpled inward in a blast of unseen energy just as the shrieking vocals kicked in. Ren strode in, actually, physically in the lead despite all of his advisors’ protestations, hand raised, blaster bolts bouncing off the air in front of him to sizzle harmlessly against the bulkheads. He wore a new helmet similar in design to the old one, but with a slightly more protruding nose and mouth cover. The muzzle gave him a doglike aspect, like some terrifying animal-headed god worshipped on primitive backwater planets.

The vid cut to another camera, this one showing a group of about ten men pressed to the corridor bulkheads, firing into into the adjoining corridor, presumably where Ren was. Hux watched in amusement as their eyes grew wider and wider, horrified realization setting in as they saw how useless their blasters were against an enemy like this. Eventually, their blaster fire slowed and they drew their close-quarter weapons—a few stolen shock batons the like, several plain old swords, knives, and staves.

The men charged, pouring out of the shot, which cut to the initial corridor from a different angle, showing Ren from the back as he took out three of them with one swift slash, their falling bodies tripping up the other seven, slowing them enough that Ren could run two through in one quick lunge and take out the other five with a few effortless-looking flicks of his wrist. There was no movement wasted on threatening flourishes, none of that elegant, dancing blade work the Jedi were famous for, no warnings given. Ren wasn’t graceful or beautiful—he fought like he looked; brutal, deadly. All power and no finesse.

Hux licked his lips, captivated. The Stormtroopers behind Ren didn’t have anything to do, so they simply followed him as he walked deeper into the bowels of the enemy ship. The vid flowed seamlessly from shot to shot, following him into the ship—the angles weren’t great, all from too far above, but it was still a neat bit of editing. Ren picked off every man he came across before his Troopers could even get a shot off, ending the lives of would-be heroes and small pockets of organized resistance with equal alacrity.

As the song built to a final crescendo, Ren made his way to a large, closed door. The camera cut to another room—behind the door, presumably—showing that this was where the crew had chosen to make their last stand. There were about twenty of them in there, barricaded behind tables, blasters out. Behind them were the noncombatants, the engineers, medics, cooks, and whatnot. Hux’s stomach tightened in anticipation.

The Troopers were finally given a task and affixed charges to the door, the party stepping back into the corridors, out of the way of the blast. A few seconds later, the door exploded, leaving only a large hole in the bulkhead, barely visible through the billowing smoke. The Troopers started forward but Ren motioned them back. They subsided, body language visibly uneasy even with their armor.

Ren’s cloak billowed behind him as he walked casually into the room. Hux expected him to do that deflection trick again—or, if he was showing off, parry the bolts with his lightsaber or catch them in midair. Instead, the assembled crewman just _didn’t fire_. They looked around, as if waiting for the intruder. Sith hells, they didn’t see him. The smoke wasn’t that thick—this was a mind trick. Fuck, trick didn’t cover it—this was something else, an order of magnitude higher.

One crewman broke free and screamed a warning, but it was too late—there was no audio except the shrieking of the song, but Hux could imagine the way her scream would cut off as Ren beheaded her. He vaulted the barrier, kicking one crewman into another and knocking them both down on the way over, then landing neatly and bisecting another pair as he straightened. He drove his lightsaber savagely down out of the frame once, then again—the ones he’d knocked down, most likely.

Even at this weird angle, Hux could see the whites of the crewmen’s panicked eyes. They shot at Ren in no particular pattern, every man for himself, but they missed to a man, too startled by his sudden-seeming appearance to get it quite right. Hux snorted as a few of the civilians fell to friendly fire.

Their formation was shot, too, no lines, just clusters of men—it was appallingly sloppy. Perhaps their commander was already dead. Ren threw himself into the center of the largest cluster, laying into all the nearby crewmen, blade arcing through the swirling smoke. None of them could fire without hitting their comrades—some drew melee weapons, some broke and ran.

Ren sent his lightsaber whirling through the air, striking the cowards down as they fled, and lashed out at those nearby with his hands and feet as he controlled the blade’s movement with his mind. He was a formidable barehanded fighter, putting all that strength to good use— men crumpled as Ren kicked one’s kneecap in, delivered a vicious uppercut to the nose of another, and then snapped the neck of a third. The lightsaber smacked back into his upraised palm, even though he wasn’t looking.

By this point, even the armed men were simply cowering in fear. Ren turned, apparently uninterested in them now that they had stopped fighting, though he kicked one down for good measure and ran another through on his way back out of the room. As he walked away, one of the crewmen managed to fire a blaster right at the center of his back, but he stepped out of the way without even breaking his stride.

The Troopers entered the room, guns out, and the video ended as Ren raised his hand and brought it down, commanding them to open fire.

 _“Kriff,”_ Hux muttered almost reverently, staring at the now-still screen in shock. That was really… something. He swallowed and took a seat at the conference table, pressing the button to play the video again. It wasn’t that he wanted to watch it again, it was just to make sure that he had assessed it correctly. It was important for him to make the right call here. The second viewing proved just as impressive as the first.

He sent Geroe a brief message telling her not to take it down, and to see that it was ‘leaked’ to the other ships in the fleet. There was no one in the entire First Order military who wouldn’t both enjoy and benefit from watching their Supreme Leader personally dispatch a significant number of their enemies—they were already afraid of him, but it was more because of his reputation for volatility and his mysterious Dark Side powers. This would, perhaps, go some way in adding a little admiration to the mix.

Hux found himself lingering over the still frame at the end, finger hovering over the ‘repeat’ button. He wanted to watch it again. For all Hux disliked him personally, there was something utterly compelling about Ren in action—it was almost like he _became_ violence. More than that, it was like watching him revert to his natural state. Was it really so surprising that he responded to shipboard life so unfavorably? Ren could never be happy so contained. He was meant to be out there, doing what he did best (i.e. killing) not stuck on a damned leash. It was like trying to keep a nexu in a box—difficult, costly, a tragic waste of one of nature’s most perfect killing machines, and ultimately, as Hux strongly suspected Snoke had learned, fucking stupid.

The matter of how to best utilize Ren’s abilities (and how to maneuver him into position to be so utilized) would require further thought. In the mean time, he gave in to temptation and played the video again—oh, how he wished it had sound. Hearing the _shoom_ of Ren’s lightsaber and the screams of the dying men would be so much more satisfying than this awful music. Even without it, though, the near-perfect brutality of Ren’s movements soothed something in Hux’s overworked, tightly-wound soul.

Watching Ren move, drinking in that sense of power, that ferocity, was strangely heady. Partially, it was just the size of him, the tremendous strength contained in a form that looked awkward and bulky when he was just standing about but unfolded into something glorious when he was in motion. Even in the vid, he was still in the narrow confines of the a ship—Hux wanted to see him on a battlefield. Wanted to see him slaughter to his heart’s content, if such a thing was even possible. He didn’t think it was—he’d only ever tasted the edges of Ren’s rage, but he didn’t think it was a thing so easily satisfied. Still, with enough room to move and enough enemies to really stretch his abilities to the fullest, he’d be magnificent.

He would also be a sight to see in a good old-fashioned bar fight, the kind Hux and his comrades from the academy had gotten into so long ago. The really vicious kind in the worst spaceports, where the night wasn’t over until somebody died. None of this mystical mask-robe-and-lightsaber business, just fists and feet and improvised weapons. He wanted to see the look on his face—would it be all focus and emptiness, like Hux’s own fighting face? Or would it be a mad grin, violent and strange and joyful?

Hux wanted to see the blood on his knuckles and the stark dynamism of his movements unobscured by his multitudinous layers. He wanted to see Ren get a little roughed up and then give it back tenfold, blood on his lips and that incandescent rage in his eyes. Hux was more than competent in hand-to-hand himself, and he was certainly cleverer and meaner than Ren, but that size and strength would be such an asset in an all-out brawl.

The end of the video and its accompanying song drew Hux out of his daze, cut short his increasingly farfetched, disjointed visions of either fighting Ren or fighting alongside him. That was entirely enough of that—he had work to do. First, he’d go inspect the repairs to the engines, which he’d been on his way to do before this little interruption and then he had that damn holoconference with the other generals, and then he had a whole stack of promotions paperwork to get through.

Hux stood, finding that he felt somewhat strange, unfocused, his breath coming too quickly. His face was a bit warm, his stomach a little tight. His bottom lip felt irritated, like he’d been worrying it with his teeth. He was also, he noticed with dismay, half-hard. _Appalling._ Aroused over Ren—what an absurd concept. It was, arguably, even less flattering than the alternative explanation that it was just the violence itself that did it for him. He’d certainly rather be a psychopath than someone who wanted to fuck Kylo Ren.

He wondered idly if he could somehow arrange for Ren to be ambushed by his enemies while he was in the shower, so that he’d have to fight them off while naked and dripping wet. The fight would, of course, spill out into the corridors so Hux could observe it firsthand, could see the way each muscle group moved as Ren threw punches and spun through kicks.

Hux wanted to smack himself in the face, and he did so, lightly, as he tried to pull himself together. This was ridiculous. He _did not_ want to see Kylo Ren naked. Ren was an embarrassment, a liability. A spoiled child and a useless mystic. The man wasn’t even attractive!

(This last wasn’t even slightly true and he knew it. Ren was oddly put together, but the overall effect was not unpleasing. He had, Hux remembered thinking the first time he’d seen Ren’s face, nice eyes. Intense eyes, so much less cold than he’d been expecting. And that mouth… Was that why he wore the mask? Because he got tired of his freaky mind reading powers telling him that everybody and their brother wondered what those plush red lips would feel like around—)

This wasn’t helping. Hux shoved the thought away, tossing it neatly in his ‘things not to think about’ box. He turned his mind back to his work, more successfully this time. He gave himself five minutes to contemplate his upcoming meeting—the prospect of seeing General Rortica’s smug kriffing face was more than enough to kill any lingering arousal—and headed out the door.

If the arc of Ren’s arm as he beheaded the surprised crewman or the line of his back as he cut through three men at once slipped into his thoughts between waking and sleeping that night, well, those half-dreams never made any sense. If he woke in the small hours with the thought of how huge Ren’s hands had looked as they held the head of the guy whose neck he’d snapped stuck in his head, it wasn’t particularly surprising—he’d had nightmares of Ren killing him before. He didn’t usually wake up from them with his cock hard, but bodies were like that sometimes. There wasn’t any relation.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hux watches another vid and gets a bit carried away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I forgot how much I love getting comments!! It's so good!!

Hux’s datapad pinged at him from beside his bed, pulling him from his sleep. He fumbled for it disorientedly, looking at the time—0047, he’d _just_ gotten to sleep, for fuck’s sake—before opening the message, hoping desperately it wasn’t anything he’d need to get out of bed for. It read:

 

_General,_

_Information and Morale Sub-officer Renak reports that he has finished with his current assignment. He also reports that the Stormtrooper helmet-cam and surveillance drone footage proved most satisfactory for this purpose. I have attached two copies of the next vid—one with sound, and one with music. Please let me know which you wish to release onto the intra-holonet._

_Lieutenant Innsley Geroe_

 

Excellent, just what he’d been hoping for—not only did this require no immediate action, it was something he’d been looking forward to for a while now. Hux sat up, scrubbing at his face with his hands, something hot grabbing at his insides. Excitement, anticipation—he’d given up calling it anything else at this point. This was the fourth of these vids he’d seen, third since he’d semi-secretly assigned Renak (the culprit behind the original vid) to the project. It wasn’t official, per se. Something so tawdry as personal violence was hardly the image they wanted to project, after all. However, it was widely known that no one had even tried to quash the existence of the videos. High-ranking officers even commented on them from time-to-time—in the online forum, of course, and never officially. Hux was not among them.

The second and third vids had been an even bigger hit than the first, since the newly promoted Information and Morale Sub-officer now had official access to any footage he wanted and enough time to put together something truly impressive. Hux had watched them more times than he was willing to admit while meditating on what to do about their Supreme Leader. The problem consumed a great deal of his attention and was seemingly intractable—often, he wished he’d been quicker on the draw when he’d found Ren unconscious after Snoke’s death.

Failing that, he wished Ren was actually interested in being Supreme Leader. He rarely did any actual ruling, and when he did, it was only to insist, for reasons he did not see fit to share, that they go and do something ill-advised and costly. That man-child had no patience for the details of running an empire, seemingly content to leave it all to his advisors while he immersed himself in his mumbo-jumbo—not a good strategy when the advisors all disagreed with each other and so spent all of their time arguing and scheming instead of getting things done.

It was so _frustrating,_ and the vids only made it worse. They made it impossible to dismiss him entirely—he was too good for it to just be magic or whatever. Somewhere in that incomprehensible head was a solid grasp of tactics, an understanding of human motivation nearly as good as Hux’s own, and even the self-discipline to obtain the level of muscle memory a top class fighter needed. He could be such an asset, if only he didn’t have his head stuck quite so far up his own ass.

Hux took a breath and let it out slowly through his nose, releasing the tension in his jaw, in his shoulders. He was fully awake now—a moment’s meditation on the very large thorn in his side was as good as a cup of strong caf. He adjusted his pillow, propping it against the headboard, and settled back against it, half-reclining. From the bedside table, he grabbed his reading glasses—he didn’t really need them, could see and read perfectly fine without them, but it was more pleasant if he didn’t have to work to focus, and just now he wanted to see Ren’s latest exploits in sharp relief. The soft edges of hyperopia didn’t suit him.

Hux tapped the link to the attachment, choosing the one with sound—Renak’s taste in music was reliably terrible, but even if it had been excellent, Hux still preferred the unadulterated version.

The video opened with an establishing shot of the Iterian mountains on Cephox Beta, then panned down to show the plains below, where a pitched battle was currently underway. This had been about a week ago, and the improved camera-work was due to the fact that Hux had quietly assigned Renak several camera drones to do with what he would during the invasion, though of course he was also under orders not to make it look too official, and not to let Ren catch on if he could help it.

Hux’s chest swelled with pride at the orderly ranks of Troopers, walkers, and droids, already three-quarters encircling the Cephite troops. This had been largely his battle plan, and it had (for once) gone almost entirely the way he had hoped it would. Ground invasions were messy, but they needed to mine those metal-rich mountains and required the native population as a labor force, so they’d had to make it work somehow, and make it work they had.

Ren—insisting, once again, on putting himself at risk—had led a floating reinforcement unit made up of their most elite Troopers, who would go wherever they were needed to shore up faltering parts of the line. And now Hux could see them through the eyes of another camera drone, holding back the charge of a battalion of Cephites who’d thought they’d seen a weak spot.

The six-limbed Cephites were excellent swordsmen, and a key part of their strategy was to get a few men in close enough to cause problems for an army that primarily relied on ranged weapons. Aim was hard when there were four whirling blades right up in your face. They weren’t like the scared, desperate crewmen on the Aravaanian cruiser; these were skilled soldiers.

That wasn’t stopping Ren and his men. The troopers held most of them at bay—this group was partially made up of their best marksmen. However, the Cephites were desperate enough that they were willing to lose man after man to get a few into close quarters and have a shot at widening the breach. They kept getting through the Troopers’ fire, and that was when they met Ren’s lightsaber.

Look at him, just _look at him_. This was just as good as Hux had hoped. With no bulkheads to hem him in, the ferocity of Ren’s movements was no longer even slightly constrained. He didn’t have to pull his strikes to avoid ripping a hole in the side of a ship, so he could put all his strength and speed behind them. He was a kriffing work of art, Hux thought as he watched him avoid blow after blow, catching the electrified edges of Cephite blades on his saber, only to lash out at the slightest sign of weakness, piercing the carapace of a Cephite at the vulnerable joining of its segments.

Hux’s free hand, the one that wasn’t holding the datapad, stroked idly up and down his thigh as he watched Ren destroy the Cephites, one after another. He was faster than such a large man had any right to be, inhumanly strong. He was keeping up with fully five of them, dispatching one whenever it came too close or left itself open, only for another to take it’s place. There was an old adage about a Jedi being worth a hundred ordinary men in combat, and Hux thought it might be true for whatever Ren was, too. He wondered about Ren’s kill count in much the same way a miser tried to estimate the number of coins in a stack, avaricious and possessive.

Hux wanted him. Late at night, in the privacy of his own quarters—in his own bed, no less—he found himself unable to deny it. He’d been lying to himself about it for weeks now, he knew, and in this moment he no longer saw the point of trying to pretend he wasn’t absolutely dying to get Ren under him. Or on top of him. Behind him. Holding him up against the wall… Hux wasn’t a small man, but he bet Ren could do it. Maybe he could use the Force. Maybe he— _fuck_ —maybe he wouldn’t have to.

On the screen, Ren whirled and slashed, his movements not quite graceful but somehow fluid, the black of his cloak flowing around him like spilled ink. One Cephite darted towards him, thinking him overextended, and was flung away as if by an invisible hand. Another took advantage of the distraction and managed to score a hit, cutting a fine slash through Ren’s padded tunic before he knocked it down and kicked it away hard enough that even through the din of the battle, the nearby Stoormtrooper’s helmet picked up the wet crunch of its exoskeleton fracturing. It was dead or dying, but Ren’s wound was superficial, almost decorative. Hux inexplicably wanted to touch it. He wanted to press his fingertips against the wound and hear Ren gasp in pain.

Hux’s wandering hand had found its way between his legs, and somehow he’d ended up slowly stroking himself through his soft boxer-briefs, fingertips teasing along the length of his cock.

He pictured that gasp in every detail—the expansion of Ren’s doubtlessly impressive chest, the drawing-up of his brows, and most importantly, the parting of his too-red lips. Ren was always so reactive, so responsive—out of his mask, he was, at times, almost painfully unguarded. In front of the men, Hux found it deeply embarrassing and altogether contemptible. But privately, it could be something else. He wanted that vulnerability all for himself. He wanted Ren to learn some damned self-control in his daily life, but maybe even more than that, he wanted to watch Ren fall apart under his hands.

He could picture it so clearly. That same Ren who was even now (on the vid, anyway, the real one was probably sleeping or whatever the hell else he did at night) running out of Cephites willing to take him on spread out on Hux’s bed, bound, perhaps, taking whatever Hux chose to give him. Each gentle touch would make him him sigh with pleasure, each scrape of his fingernails would make him gasp with pain. The sheer variety of noises Hux could pull from him… wanton moans and broken little whimpers, impatient growls and a thousand curses. Hux’s name, soft and reverent, or overwhelmed and half-sobbing, or shouted out for anyone nearby to hear.

His. That was the idea, that was the thing, that was the thought that had him shoving his shorts down off his hips and wrapping his hand around his cock, suddenly frantic. He wanted Ren to be his, his to toy with, his to please or hurt, his to command. His strength, his need, that throbbing, beautiful rage that ran like magma through his veins and kept him burning, that seeped out through every tiny crack in his facade, white-hot and dangerous—all his. No one else should get to see that, no one but him. Hux wanted all of it, wanted to be the only one to possess it, to possess Kylo Ren as his personal property, to do with him as he willed.

Hux’s ragged breathing sounded too loud in the late-night quiet of his rooms, and he imagined it was Ren’s instead of his own, let himself groan long and low in the back of his throat and imagined that it was the sound Ren made when Hux toyed with the head of his cock, gentle and teasing when all he wanted was to come. He’d be so impatient, always rushing headlong for the finish, but Hux wouldn’t let him, would keep him there and play with him for hours, edging him up to the brink of orgasm again and again until he was crying, those pretty brown eyes shining wet with tears, his mouth open and begging, “please, please, Hux, General,” no, “my Emperor,” that was better, “please, I’ll do anything—”

“Anything? Would you kill for me?”

“Yes, yes, whoever you want, whenever you want, as many as you—as many as you want, _please,_ please just let me—”

So good, that would be so good, to have Kylo Ren as his own, to use how he pleased, fuck toy or attack dog or both.

Hux’s body curled in on itself as he rocked his hips quick and hard, fucking up into his hand as his mind jumped back and forth between images of making Ren choke on his cock and making Ren cut down his every enemy. From rival generals—the kick of Rortica’s feet against the floor as Ren reached out with the crushing force of an invisible hand and choked the life out of him—to childhood tormentors, to that stupid fuck in the mess hall who always made Hux’s sandwiches all crooked, Hux would have but to command it and they would fall by Ren’s hand.

His pet monster, his right hand, his greedy little whore—

All that power, caught between Hux’s thighs, begging for the privilege of fucking him—

Ren’s long neck in a collar, Ren’s warrior’s body dressed up like a common pleasure slave, “lie still, sweetheart, and let me use you,” as he rode Ren’s cock like it was a custom-order toy made just for him—

So close, he was so close, he wanted to come in Ren’s pretty mouth, make him swallow it, don’t you dare spill a single drop—don’t you— _fuck_ —

Hux let out a strangled cry that could have been some sort of profanity and could have been no word known to man, hips jerking as he came all over himself, too caught up in pleasure and fantasy to even catch it with his hand. He worked himself through it, chest heaving, eyes screwed shut, imagining holding Ren by the hair as he emptied himself down his throat, imagined Ren’s teary eyes and bulging cheeks, the delightful constriction as he choked and gagged…

Hux inhaled once, and let out a long, contented sigh as his body relaxed, all his tension draining away. Sith hells, he’d needed that. He’d been too stressed lately to even bother with jerking off—a mistake. He’d forgotten how good an orgasm could feel. And now, he felt light as air…

This lasted for approximately thirty seconds. Then, reality set in, and Hux realized that he was laying in bed with his hand still around his softening cock, his reading glasses on, his shorts tangled around his knees, and come on his shirt at 0100 hours. He’d really… He’d really just jerked off to Kylo Ren. He’d just had a whole kriffing porno’s worth of ridiculous fantasies about _Kylo Ren,_ of all people. It was absurd.

He felt like an absolute idiot. Also, he needed a shower. He had to be awake in four hours, ready to suffer through another day of bullshit posturing with Rortica and the like, trying to hold together this mess of an organization despite everyone else’s best efforts to fracture it into a million useless little pieces.

Worst of all, he didn’t think that one frantic midnight wank was going to cure him of his Ren-related lusts. He was going to have to go through his day, and the next one, and the one after that, with the knowledge that of what he’d just done (and was likely to do again) in the back of his mind. And somehow, he was going to have to keep this from Ren, despite the fact that the man could read his mind whenever he felt like it.

Hux desperately wanted a drink, but he knew that one would turn into several and it was already too late at night. Instead, he tugged off his shirt, used it to clean himself off, pulled his shorts back up, and went back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Our hero (or our protagonist, at least) attends a meeting, encounters Kylo Ren (finally!), and tries really, really hard not to let on that anything's changed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hux goes to work, converses with Kylo Ren, and witnesses a Delightful Event.

 

Chapter Three

 

Hux dreamt that he was about to be crowned Emperor, but the crown had somehow been mislaid, and he was running frantically around a huge marble palace looking for it. He couldn’t ask for help because then people would know that he didn’t have it, and everything would fall apart. Possibly someone had moved it, but maybe he’d just lost it himself, and he couldn’t risk anyone finding out about that.

He woke with his glasses mashed into the side of his face and and an ache in his skull, a sense of dread like lead in his stomach telling him that today was going to be a bad day. He forced himself out of bed and stumbled to the ‘fresher, staring blearily at his tired face in the mirror.

It was rare for him to wake up in a truly foul temper, but today was the exception. He was short on sleep and even shorter on patience, and for just a moment he wished that he was the sort of man who smashed things in fits of pique—it would be nice to have the outlet. Instead, he showered and shaved, gelled his hair and put on his uniform. Usually he liked the weight of it, but today it felt too heavy and constricting.

First order of business—caf. Then, his bridge shift—0600 to 1200. The bridge shift passed uneventfully, the only occurrences of any note being a request for “four (4) live rathtars” from R&D and a note from the recently-returned-to-duty Captain Phasma requisitioning an extra three _hundred_ pounds of nelgeterium plastic explosive. When he’d gone down to ask her about this, she calmly explained that she had come back to find that the armory’s entire store of the stuff was missing. She was going to look for it, she promised, it was just that there was a lot to do, since she’d been in a bacta tank for nigh-on a month. If they ended up with some extra, well, it wasn’t a problem, since “they’d use it eventually.”

Sometimes, Hux reflected, you just had to go with it. He’d granted the request, after a quick check on Phasma’s medical records, just to make sure.

Lunch, too, was relatively uneventful, even mildly pleasant after he’d rearranged his sandwich to his liking. Though he could hardly enjoy it, with his thoughts focused on the upcoming meeting. He _would_ talk everyone out of Admiral Pappado’s completely stupid plan to start expansion towards galactic north if it was the last thing he did. He knew that he was right about this, but thanks to his close involvement in the events surrounding Snoke’s death and the destruction of the _Supremacy_ (not to mention the loss of Starkiller base) he was not at his most popular right now. Pappado, meanwhile, was a rising star after his ship, the _Revenant_ , single-handedly took Terolin in less than a day.

There was no use dawdling, so Hux made his way to the main holoconference room a few minutes early, in order to be his most composed when the meeting began. This hope was quickly dashed, however, when he found their Supreme Leader lounging in a chair at the head of the table, looking, Hux thought, both entirely bored and eminently fuckable.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux greeted him, careful not to give the title the sarcastic, venomous inflection that it always had in his head. He kept his mind as blank as he could—unless Ren was a better mind-reader than Snoke, he could only pick up on surface thoughts without alerting his victim to his presence. Hux was determined to give nothing away.

“General,” Ren replied, equally impassive. This was just great—now they had to sit here awkwardly for five minutes before the conference began. Such a thing would be unpleasant at the best of times, and after last—

Hux abruptly wrenched his mind back towards the task at hand, taking his datapad out from the inside pocket of his coat and looking over his notes. It ought to be obvious to everyone involved that they needed to consolidate right now, not expand. They simply didn’t have the resources, and even if they could manage to get a foothold in A7 sector, they would be dangerously overextended.

“If it’s resources we need, why not simply take them from the new planets we conquer? Isn’t that what we do?” Ren asked, cocking his head to one side as he looked at Hux curiously.

“Not resources as in raw materials—we’ve got those coming in at a good clip,” Hux explained, suppressing a frown of displeasure at having his thoughts commented on. It was just _rude._ “It’s only been a week, but the mines on Cephox Beta are already turning out even more iron and aluminum than we were expecting. It’s ships we need, more droids, more fighters, more manpower. These things take time. We’ve taken losses, and we need to recoup before we risk any more.”

“Admiral Pappado thinks we risk losing momentum if we pause expansion now,” Ren pointed out.

“Pappado’s a fool,” Hux snapped. “Momentum’s not going to do us any good when we leave so few troops on our client worlds that they rebel.”

“You think they would dare?”

“Yes, Leader, I do. Especially because that band of rebels and traitors is still out there somewhere. All it would take is one skilled organizer and somebody with a bit of charisma to have, say, the Ekeyrians up in arms. I do not want to go and take back a world we’ve already taken once!”

Ren’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the rebels. “How goes the search?”

“Nearly every intelligence agent we have is looking for them, but nothing yet.”

“And so it is with the Knights of Ren.”

‘And so it is with the Knights of Ren…’ Pretentious ass—or was that ‘portentous ass?’ Both, he thought. Talking like he was some kind of mysterious dark wizard imparting his wisdom, _really._

Ren’s lips twitched, in amusement or annoyance, Hux couldn’t be sure. “But I am a Dark wizard, General, or the closest thing you’ll ever see to one.”

Amusement, then. It was one of the more disarming things about Ren, the occasional flashes of humor in his words. His mask had obscured his tone enough to turn a quip into just an odd comment, but without it, it was quite clear that Ren was no stranger to smart-ass remarks. Blood will out, Hux supposed.

Uh.

Shouldn’t have thought that. Hux looked away, busying himself with his notes again. Facts and figures, that’s what he needed… In more ways than one.

“That’s fair enough, I suppose,” Ren said pensively, which was really quite startling. “Do you think I ought to be humorless, Hux? Would that befit a Supreme Leader?”

He said the title like Hux had avoided saying it—as if it, too, was a joke. Ren was a mercurial man, but he seemed to be in an especially strange mood today.

“I… don’t think so, no,” Hux replied, once he realized it was a serious question. “You’re too young to really pull off the whole mysterious and semi-divine act that Snoke had going. You’re beginning to be well-liked by the men, according to Phasma. They like having someone a little more relatable at the helm.”

“That’s largely down to your propaganda efforts, I suspect,” Ren said casually.

So he knew, about that much at least. “Hardly _my_ propaganda efforts…” It was a gamble, but Ren had started it by acting so informally. “…Ren.”

Hux’s heart was in his throat—he hadn’t called Ren by just his name since before Snoke had died—but Ren either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“Oh, so you aren’t sponsoring Renak’s little endeavor?” Ren seemed more amused than angry, which wasn’t surprising. He _would_ be pleased that people had been watching videos of him looking impressive. Hells, it was probably why he was in such a good mood today. “You didn’t personally promote him and put him on liaison with the Morale and Information office? You don’t get to personally decide what content goes out and what doesn’t?”

Shit, shit, don’t think about—two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one twenty-eight, two fifty-six, five-twelve, ten twenty-four, twenty forty-eight, four, uh, four thousand ninety-six, eight thousand one hundred ninety-two, sixteen, uh, 192 times two, 200+(92x2), which was 184, so 16,384. 32,6—no, 32,7, 80+80 is 160 so that makes it 32,768.

Ren’s eyes narrowed. He leaned over, getting right up in Hux’s space, eyeing him from just a few inches away, one hand raised threateningly, as if he was going to physically pluck Hux’s thoughts from his brain. He murmured, “Deliberately obscuring your thoughts? Powers of two, how boring. Try sevens next time, if you want a challenge. What’re you hiding, General? Something about reviewing your little ‘unofficial’ propaganda vids… What could be so bad you’d risk my wrath to hide it for a few more moments?”

He was too kriffing close, Hux could feel his breath on the side of his face, could smell the caf he must’ve drank right before this, no cream and too much sugar. He wasn’t wearing his gloves, his long white fingers out in the open for all to—64,000… 1400+120+16=65,536. So that meant, what was 65x2, 130. Carry the one so 1310(36x2)…72. 131,072.

“I’ve warned you, but you’re still doing it. Are you deliberately provoking me, General Hux?”

He shifted a little closer, his other hand coming up to grip Hux’s jaw, far more gently than Hux would have expected. “It’s like you’re asking for it.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, no gloves, bare skin, _asking for it,_ he _wasn’t_ , 262, uh, 262… 262… oh, easy again, 144. 144, 12x12, so that meant this was.. two to the twenty-fourth? No, too small for that surely… maybe the 12 squared in there didn’t mean anything, so anyway, 262,144. 400+122=522288. Wait. That wasn’t right. He’d made a mistake. He couldn’t think, not with Ren this close, touching him, Ren’s strong hand on his jaw. Almost close enough to kiss, with his voice gone soft and low and threatening the way it did in interrogations, shit—what number had he been multiplying? 260… 260 something…

“Ahem.”

Ren and Hux both looked up at the same time. A hologram had appeared on the other side of the table.

Of course. Kriffing Rortica. Saved from immanent mind-rape by _Rortica,_ who’d probably heard that last line of Ren’s about ‘asking for it’ without any of the previous context and was going to go have a gossip about it with his fellows right after this.

Ren subsided, shifting back into his earlier bored sprawl, but it came off as less authentic than before, subtly tense. Hux didn’t have a trace of the force, but he was damn good at reading people, and his sense for danger-danger-outburst-immanent based on Ren’s body language had only worsened with Rortica’s arrival.

“General,” Ren greeted Rortica, just as he’d greeted Hux a small eternity ago.

“Supreme Leader,” Rortica replied. “I hope you are well this afternoon.”

“I am.”

He didn’t return the pleasantry, because Ren was nothing if not reliably rude.

They were saved from too much awkwardness by the appearances of the other generals, admirals, and a few of the higher-ranking ship’s captains, along with a few statesmen and what passed for diplomats in the First Order.

“Let’s keep this short,” Ren said, after everyone was there. “I’ve got things to do.”

Rortica’s eyes darted towards Hux, who glared back defiantly.

“Very well,” said Pappado confidently. “I wish to formally request the Supreme Leader’s permission to begin deployment in sector A7.”

“No,” Ren said. “Not yet. You will wait until repairs of the _Vanquisher_ and the _Black Dawn_ are complete. If—“

“But Leader!” Pappado cried, interrupting Ren. The assembled officers all silently turned horrified, incredulous eyes on him, and then looked to Ren, awaiting his response. Hux’s lips curved up into a thin, involuntary smile—Pappado was such a kriffing moron. Heedless of the trouble he’d just brought upon himself, he continued, “If we don’t mo—”

His comment cut off mid word, his hands going to his throat.

“If you _ever_ interrupt me again, General,” Ren snarled, coming to his feet, one hand upraised, “I’ll rip out your tongue. Did you think you could railroad me into doing what you wanted? Did you think you were safe over that holo-connection, halfway across the galaxy? Wrong on both counts.

“Glory-seeking _will not_ be tolerated. Your job is to promote the interests of the First Order, and as of eight weeks ago, those interests are _my_ interests. And my interest is not in your pathetic maneuvering! It is in destroying the enemies of the First Order! You will all stay in your assigned territories, and you will scour whatever miserable patch of space you’re in charge of for _any_ trace of the rebels.”

Pappado’s face was darkening, and he pulled weakly at the air in front of him. It was so kriffing satisfying to watch one of his enemies suffer at Ren’s hand for once—there was, in general, very little he enjoyed more than watching people he hated suffer. But there was also an added pleasure in the fact that it was _Ren_ doing it, in having that temper he’d been on the wrong side of so many times turned on someone else. Someone else who he’d just finished telling Ren how much he didn’t like… It was almost like what he’d imagined last night.

Ren signaled and Hux cut the call, the images of the assembled officers blinking out of existence.

As soon as they were gone, Ren let out a harsh breath and sagged, bracing his hands on the table, head hanging down as he struggled to catch his breath.

Apparently, Force-choking someone who was (almost literally) on the other side of the galaxy was difficult. Hux filed this information away for future use.

“A wise decision, Supreme Leader,” Hux said, deciding not to address Ren’s display of vulnerability. In fact, he was trying to ignore it for the time being—dwelling overmuch on the sweeping curve of Ren’s back as he bent over the table was deeply inadvisable just now. He wasn’t entirely succeeding in this effort, but Ren didn’t appear to have noticed.

Ren turned his head to stare balefully at Hux, his eyes red-rimmed, glinting gold under the florescent lights of the conference room. “Don’t get presumptuous, Hux. Taking Pappado down a notch is exactly what I showed up to this meeting for, so it’s not like I did it on your say-so. I’m getting tired of this lot—yourself included—forever jockeying for position. This ought to make them behave for a little while. Mind that you do the same.”

“Of course,” Hux agreed, smirking. He wasn’t even mad about the preemptory tone just now. That had been _too good._

Ren straightened, seeming to have mostly recovered from his supernatural exertions. “Then you’re dismissed.”

Hux nodded, turning to walk away, but Ren called after him, making him pause.

“And Hux? Because I’m such a magnanimous leader, I’ll let you keep your secrets today. But if I ever catch you hiding your thoughts so clumsily again, know that I will take you apart right where you stand to get at whatever you’re keeping from me.”

Hux swallowed, the images from last night’s fantasies threatening to come up as if Ren has called them. But they were easily diverted, for now—he recalled the little ‘hrk!’ noise Pappado had made as Ren seized him by the throat as he walked away.

As it turned out, this wasn’t a bad day after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Did Hux really make it through the day without Kylo finding out? Or is the Supreme Leader really just hiding his awareness and biding his time? Find out next time, when it's time for Hux's turn to be impressive! 
> 
>  
> 
> Also: I realize that Hux is probably better at math than this, but just assume that because of their advanced technology, the F.O.'s education system doesn't stress mental math or memorization.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there's an intruder in Hux's quarters, and it isn't Kylo Ren. 
> 
> Featuring a role reversal, one (1) casual murder, and the beginning of a Fun Adventure for our favorite awful lads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter:  
> -as usual, graphic violence (but it's not seen from a distance this time)  
> -blood (like a _lot_ of blood)  
>  -mind control (on a one-off OC)  
> -attempted nonconsensual drug use

Hux started awake on a surge of alarm, unsure of what had roused him. He lay still, staring at the bulkhead, listening. There it was; a soft footfall in the main room of his quarters—it must have been the door that woke him. Someone was in here, and there was no reason for it to be anyone friendly.

He reached under his pillow with his right hand and took hold of the knife he kept there, a sharp, slender dagger that had lain under every pillow he’d slept on since his Academy days. He didn’t want to give away that he was awake, so he lay there, waiting, breathing slowly and evenly, feigning sleep despite the way leaving his back exposed to the room made his skin crawl.

The inner door hissed open and Hux listened closely as the intruder—intruders?—entered. Yes, there were two of them, he was almost certain, though perhaps there could have been three if two were walking in sync with one another. It took every ounce of discipline he possessed to stay still but not rigid, to keep breathing evenly when there were two probable enemies creeping towards him.

A sickly-sweet smell wafted towards him as one of the intruders approached his bed, Hux’s every instinct screaming in protest as he lay still for one last moment, waiting for his target to enter optimal striking range. He felt the man draw closer still, leaning over him, the smell—chloroform, it had to be—intensifying as he reached down. Hux’s eyes snapped open and he seized the intruder’s wrist with his left hand, pulling down hard as he struck upwards with the knife in his right.

He caught the attacker across the face, slicing a long furrow across his jaw and cheek. The man shouted and tried to rear back even as he fell forward, propelled by Hux’s grip on his wrist. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second as he began to topple over, and then Hux struck again. This time his aim was true, and his blade found his enemy’s throat, biting deep enough to sever his carotid. Blood gushed from the wound, soaking Hux through in the instant between the blow and the fall, before the dying man’s dead weight fell atop him with a wet smack.

He was heavy, and Hux struggled for a moment with the weight of him and the suddenly-soaked tangle of his blankets, thrashing wildly as he freed himself and rolled to his feet. The other man—no, a woman—advanced on him with a syringe in one hand and a vibraknife in the other.

He had only enough time to switch to an underhand grip and then she was on him, darting in lightning-quick, risking his blade as she tried to jab the syringe in his side.

She didn’t make it. He sidestepped the blow and caught her forearm with his elbow, hitting it hard enough to send the syringe flying, and lashed out with the knife. She parried the blow with her own blade and stepped back nimbly, baring her not-quite-human teeth at him.

“Guessch it’s not going to look like an accschident after all,” she commented in accented Basic, sounding mildly put out but not too terribly concerned. “A pity. I was reially looking forward to that exschtra thouschand credits—though I won’t have to schplit the fffee with Keffy now, so I sch’pose we’re evven.”

Hux lunged at her, knife extending towards her chest, but she blocked it at the last moment with her own. His arm juddered and shook from the sonic vibrations of her knife as he tried to use his greater mass to break her grip, and ultimately, that was what forced him back—he had to disengage lest his knife be shaken loose from his hand.

She struck out with a kick, trying to sweep his legs, but he jumped neatly out of the way and then charged her. They toppled to the ground with him on top, their arms locked together—her hand snapped out to wrap around the wrist of his knife hand and his did the same, pinning her knife hand to the floor.

She thrashed under him, trying to roll them and regain the upper hand, but she was too slow—he’d already got his knees under him and sat astride her thighs, effectively pinning her lower body. She bucked wildly, and if she’d been Phasma’s size that might have been enough to throw him off, but she was a slender thing, built for speed and stealth more than strength.

He lifted her hand and slammed it into the ground, then again, then again, until she gasped in pain and loosened her grip on the knife enough for him to fling it away. She got in a solid punch as he did so, and Hux could only turn his face to take it on the jaw instead of the nose. He reeled briefly, shocked by the pain and the taste of blood, by the sudden anger that flooded his veins. Enraged, he risked another blow by backhanding her across the face as hard as he could instead of pinning her hand again.

She cried out in pain, a wet little whine of a sound, as her grip on his knife hand slackened involuntarily. He wrenched his hand free and brought the blade to her throat, holding it there against her fear-fluttering pulse. In that moment, he wanted to kill her as much as he’d ever wanted anything—victory was his, and she was so, _so_ afraid. It had been a long time since he’d watched someone die at close range.

He struggled to slow the heaving of his chest, to calm the staticky rush of blood in his ears. He had to—there was some reason he shouldn’t kill her, despite that being the only appropriate consequence for someone who entered his rooms and attacked him while he slept. He had to… He had to interrogate her, had to find out who sent her and why.

There was too much blood in his mouth—her punch had cut his cheek on his teeth—and so he spat it out onto her face, just to see her flinch, just to hear her whimper. He’d let that be his satisfaction, for now.

And that, of course, was when rescue came. The door flew open with an awful grinding sound, and there was Ren, backlit by the brightly lit corridor, flanked by the familiar silhouettes of a team of Stormtroopers. Hux blinked at the sudden influx of light.

“Lights to fifty percent,” Ren said, and stepped into the room as the illumination came up, his troopers following him. The Supreme Leader cut an absurd figure, barefoot in boxers and an inside-out, unfastened house robe, his lightsaber crackling with deadly energy and held at the ready. Hux stared, feeling a bit adrift—he looked so silly, but the contrast between the deadly weapon and the almost-obscene vulnerability of his white ankles and his hairy toes was extremely, unexpectedly arresting.

The very sight of him made Hux feel more composed by comparison, despite the fact that he was clearly even more disheveled, covered in the blood of his enemies as he was. He was starting to come down, now, off the high of adrenaline and anger, reminded of his position and his desire to appear controlled at all times by the appearance of this chaotic individual in his doorway.

Ren gestured and the three troopers entered the room, one pointing his blaster Hux’s prisoner, another checking the bedroom, and the third checking the ‘fresher. They reported back a moment later—“These quarters are secure. There’s one dead in the bedroom.”

Ren raised an eyebrow and went to inspect the scene himself. Hux rose, trusting the trooper’s gun to keep the prisoner in line. He did not, however, set his knife down.

When Ren returned, he looked Hux slowly up and down as if appraising him anew in light of his actions here. Hux fought down the urge to squirm under his gaze, suddenly self-conscious and too aware that he was dressed only in blood-soaked undergarments. A small smile curled across Ren’s usually-dour features, and his voice was warm with approval as he said, “I didn’t know you had it in you, Hux. To kill like this, up close and personal. I thought you trained as a sniper.”

“I did,” Hux replied, “But I’ve had enough occasion to need my close-combat skills that it’s worth keeping in practice with that as well.”

“Mm,” Ren agreed, and Hux could have sworn his eyes dropped to Hux’s mouth for just a moment. “I wish I could have seen you. I bet you’re a vicious little fucker when you’re backed into a corner.”

“I like to think so. We could, ah, spar sometime, if you’d like…”

What was he saying? Making the offer was one thing, but making it like that? He sounded like he was asking Ren out, for fuck’s sake. In his defense, he was not at his best just now—he was still vibrating with directionless energy and it was taking a lot of his concentration not to let his eyes linger over Ren’s bare chest and abs, his thickly muscled legs, the trail of dark hair running from his navel down into the low-slung waistband of his boxers.

Ren’s smile grew wider, a little predatory, as he stepped in closer. His voice was low and too soft for the occasion. “You take down a couple of thugs for hire and suddenly you think you can give me a challenge? Cocky, Hux.”

“Not unduly so, I’d wager.”

“Oh, we’re wagering now? What do you have to bet, General?”

Hux’s brain helpfully supplied a whole list of things he was willing to bet. He wondered distantly if Ren was watching them unfold inside his mind.

Ren licked his lips and Hux thought that he probably was. He was less put out about this than he thought he should be—a touch of shock, he suspected. He felt a little dissociated at present. He could do with a drink. Also, he needed a shower. He wanted to pull Ren in with him. He wanted to celebrate his continuing existence on this mortal plane in the way people had been doing since time immemorial.

Somewhere behind him, a Stormtrooper’s armor clacked as he shifted his weight, reminding him that a) he and Ren weren’t alone, and b) there was work to be done. Hux took a step back—when had they got this close?—and said, “Can you get it out of her, who sent her?”

Ren nodded, his face closing down as much as it ever did, back to business. Hux watched as he approached the prisoner, crouching down beside her.

“Hello, Wekk,” he said, his voice soft and pleasant like he was talking to a child or a pet. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Kylo Ren,” she answered, seeming caught by his eyes. She had gone still, but she seemed neither afraid nor defiant now. Instead she was relaxed, entirely acquiescent.

“Right. You’re going to answer my questions, right, Wekk?”

Wekk hesitated for a moment and Ren repeated, “You’re going to answer my questions.”

The assassin nodded, never taking her eyes off Ren’s. In an uncharacteristic flight of fancy, Hux was reminded of a story he’d read as a child about a vampire who could hypnotize people with his eyes. He wouldn’t even be surprised if Ren pulled her close and bent to suck her blood from her neck.

“Who sent you, _vesh’lek_?”

“Reetha,” Wekk answered, the one-word answer sounding somehow childlike.

“Tell me about Reetha.”

“Reetha something-something Anjiliac. She’s a Hutt. A middleman. I work with her a lot.”

“Very good, Wekk,” Ren murmured, stroking her hair. It made him look like a harried father comforting a child who’d woken in the middle of the night from a nightmare. Hux found it deeply unsettling on several levels.

Wekk smiled dreamily, like Ren had just shot her up with something straight from the heart of the spice triangle. The sight of her made Hux a little nauseated even as he stepped closer to see better—he’d expected Ren to just rip the knowledge out of her, shredding her mind in the process. This was something else entirely. It was, if possible, _more_ frightening.

“Do you know who hired Reetha?”

“No, silly! That’s the whole point,” Wekk said, laughing a little.

“Okay, _vesh’lek._ Can you tell me where to find her?”

“Right now? Point Nadir, I think. That’s where I’m from!”

Ren blew out a breath, pursing his lips in displeasure.

“Is that bad?” Wekk asked.

Apparently growing tired of this, Ren reached out and took her face in one overlarge hand, closing his eyes in concentration.

A moment later, he looked up at Hux, his voice back to normal. “Alright, I’ve got her location. Point Nadir’s a warren, so I had to just take it straight from her memories rather than get her to describe it. I have everything I need. Do you want to do the honors?”

“No,” Hux said, revulsion at Ren’s new interrogation technique still turning his stomach. He had no desire to kill her anymore—what Ren had done to her was punishment enough. “You do it.”

Wekk’s neck snapped, seemingly of its own volition. Hux tried not to flinch, but he didn’t entirely succeed. What was wrong with him tonight?

Ren stood, straightening his stupid robe, and looked at him curiously, sensing his distress.

Hux thought _BACK THE KRIFF OFF_ as loud as he possibly could.

Ren’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Hux for another long moment, apparently ignoring the demand for privacy. Then, he said, “Don’t worry, I’d never be able to do that to you. I could rip all your secrets out, but I couldn’t roll you completely unless you let me. Wekk was damaged goods—I only had to push a little at the right places and she crumbled. This way doesn’t damage the mind, though I had to do that in the end anyway.”

“Very well,” Hux said, trying to change the subject. He wasn’t sure why what he’d just seen made him so uncomfortable, and he’d really rather move on now. Also, was Ren trying to comfort him? That was just fucking _weird._ “There’s really no need for you to go personally, not now that you’re the Supreme Leader. We’ll send a team—“

“No. I’ve been to places like Point Nadir. I know what the culture is like there. We’ll have a hell of a fight if we go in blasters blazing, and we don’t want to make enemies of the Anjiliac kajidic unless we have to. It makes more sense for me to go myself, incognito. Plus I can get the name and location of whoever wanted you dead in an apparent accident straight from Reetha’s head.”

“You’re easily the most recognizable face in the galaxy. How in all nine Sith hells are you going to go ‘incognito?’”

“That’s easy. A change of clothes, a scarf, some glasses—people see what they’re expecting, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, and the hundredth time I can make them. Wanna come along?”

Hux should say no. Oh, he really should. The First Order could not afford both of them being gone for any amount of time, let alone the several days this mission might take. Also, undercover missions were not even remotely his specialty. But he _really_ wanted to. In general he preferred to do things from a distance, but an attack on his person while he slept was so very personal that he wanted to retaliate in the same style. He wanted to find whoever had orchestrated tonight’s entertainments and put a knife between their ribs.

“Come on, Hux. Live a little. We’ll find Reetha and then go after whoever put her up to this. It’ll be a good object lesson for everyone, and it’ll be _fun._ ”

Hux hesitated, frowning. “Why are you so keen on this, anyway? It’s not your problem that someone tried to kill me.”

“Of course it is,” Ren replied, looking at him like he was an idiot. “I’m the Supreme Leader now, which makes you, as a high ranking officer, my asset. Do you think I’d just let someone take you away? It’d be like allowing someone to steal my lightsaber.”

The muscles of Hux’s face fought with his conscious control, lips twitching as they tried to pull back into a contemptuous sneer. Ren thought of him as his _property?_ This is what he got out of the idea that he was the Supreme Leader of the First Order, that everything in it, personnel included, was _his?_ He reacted to an attempt on Hux’s life like a child who’d just had some other kid try to break his favorite toy starship? Oh, how Hux hated this man.

“Fine,” Hux bit out, too angry to keep hold of his tone. “I’ll come. But this is my show—I get the killing blow. I don’t need your protection, Ren, but if it _entertains_ the Supreme Leader to assist me in extracting my vengeance, well, then I can hardly stop him.”

There was no way that he was just going to sit back and let Ren hunt down his mysterious enemy as if he was protecting his chattels.

“Good,” Ren said, his face serious but his eyes glittering with a kind of amused malice that made Hux want to blacken them. “We leave at 0600. I’ll make the preparations for the journey.”

0600\. That gave him three hours to ready the First Order for an extended absence of its Supreme Leader and one of its top generals. When he put it that way… Hux winced at the commentary all the old gossips would have on this little excursion.

Hux turned away from Ren without another word and strode haughtily into his bedroom as if he was wearing his uniform and greatcoat instead of his blood-soaked underwear. He glanced at the dead man but otherwise paid him no mind as he collected his datapad and a fresh uniform, careful not to sully it with his bloody hands. He was off on an inadvisable adventure in a few hours, but until then, there was work to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was very busy for a couple weeks but now I'm not, so hopefully this story be back to a decent pace of updates : )


	5. Spaceship Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our intrepid protagonist embarks on a journey, has a discussion about identity, and rues the day he started wanting Kylo Ren.

0600 came all to soon. Hux made his way to the shuttle bay, already regretting his decision to go on this excursion but nonetheless too excited to actually change his mind. He didn’t know how to feel about any of it: about his choice to temporarily abandon his responsibilities to go and play at spies, about the fact that he was about to go into one of the galaxy’s more notorious shadowports for the first time in his life, or about the fact that he was going to spend the next six hours on a shuttlecraft alone with Ren.

Ren. The Supreme Leader. His longtime rival and the man with whom he’d just conducted a deeply unsettling interrogation with while they were both wearing their underwear. The man from the vids, who killed like it was an art form. The very same horrible, childish, _infuriating_ man he’d been lusting after for weeks now—the one with the gorgeous body Hux had seen mostly uncovered for the first time last night.

He probably knew, now, that Hux had... well, not _feelings_ , or at least not affectionate ones, but _something_ for him. There hadn’t been any way for him to conceal his wandering thoughts when confronted directly with a half-naked Ren, and to be honest, he hadn’t really even had the presence of mind to try at the time, what with the assassination attempt. (Or possibly, the just-plain-murder attempt. He assumed the motivation was political, but he didn’t really know.) As far as Hux could tell, reading surface thoughts came as naturally to Ren as breathing, so he had to know the kind of obscene thoughts Hux had been having about him.

Ren, surprisingly, hadn’t called him out on it right then and there, which was what he’d been expecting (dreading) since this whole ordeal began. He hadn’t seemed put off, either, hadn’t even avoided Hux’s eyes. If anything, there had been _more_ eye contact than usual.

If Hux didn’t know better, he’d have thought Ren was flirting with him a little last night. But then again, maybe he _didn’t_ know better. After all, if he could suddenly develop a desperate desire to fuck a man he supposedly hated, couldn’t Ren have done the same at some point?

The way he’d leaned in, angling his overlarge body around Hux’s, the tone of his voice as he’d teased Hux about his offer of a sparring match—it certainly seemed to speak to some sort of interest. Hux didn’t know how to feel about that, either. Up until now, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that Ren might want him, too.

Not that it mattered. He might have an inconvenient lust for the man, and it might even be returned, but that didn’t mean that he was going to act on it. Unlike some people, he had a modicum of self-control. After all, a liaison with Kylo Ren was so obviously a bad idea that while he might fantasize about such a thing in the privacy of his own head, he had absolutely zero intention of actually following through.

But then again, a liaison with the Supreme Leader... Could he use that somehow? Certainly, a great many people had sought power that way throughout the course of history. Hux suppressed a snort—a few weeks ago he’d hated Ren (he still did, sort of) and now he was styling himself as the man’s empress, the power behind the throne.

Silliness aside, the idea had some potential. Perhaps Ren would be suggestible in the sleepy aftermath of the truly excellent sex the two of them would undoubtedly have, or maybe he’d be talkative, his bruised lips spilling secrets. He’d used sex to manipulate powerful men before—would the same tactics work on Ren? The thought was intoxicating. He actually couldn’t think of any scenario hotter than having Ren so addicted to his body that he’d do anything for another taste.

On the other hand, this sounded an awful lot like wishful thinking and/or rationalization. Ren would be able to see right through his tricks via the Force, though he was overconfident enough that that wouldn’t necessarily make him immune…

_Pfassk,_ Hux thought, allowing himself a small, rueful sigh. This really wasn’t what he needed to be worrying about right now. The _Finalizer_ ought to pretty much run on auto while he was gone unless something major happened, but he hated to think of the damage his missed hours of politicking would do when it came to his status with the other generals and admirals. He’d made sure Ren had given orders that no new offensives or anything like that would begin until after they came back, but who knew what other trouble that cursed admixture of crusty Imperials and upstart schemers could get into while he was gone.

He’d sort out whatever mess awaited him when he came back, he supposed. Whatever it was, it would be worth it, in the end. Having personally killed the person who tried to have him assassinated would could only improve his reputation. Some people—idiots, mainly—thought him prissy and snobbish, too good to get his hands dirty, and this would go some way towards alleviating that concern. PR again… perhaps he should have invited Renak along to make one of his little vids of it. No, word of mouth would be better, ultimately. No chance of a court martial, for one thing.

Hux frowned as he approached the command pinnace they’d be taking. It was almost unrecognizable—where in the heavens had Ren found all that _dirt?_ Even under that, it was different—there was no sign of the gleaming black, white, and red the little ship had once been painted, no First Order crest on its side. Ren had painted it all matte black, because of course he had. His beautiful pinnace, now painted in a black that somehow looked dingy despite its freshness and smeared with gray-brown mud. Hux grimaced.

A man stepped down off the ramp and it actually took him a moment to realize that it was, in fact, Ren. He wore a pair of sturdy, dark pants that couldn’t seem to decide if they were gray or brown, black combat boots, and a short, ancient-looking bantha-hide jacket that had long since faded to a pale gray. Under this, he wore a wrinkled maroon shirt, untucked with the top two buttons undone to expose the hollow of his throat.

He’d pulled his hair up in a short, high tail that made him look years younger, his big ears sticking out boyishly, and he’d applied some sort of cosmetic to cover both his scar and his distinctive moles. A pair of large, dark goggles obscured his eyes, which glittered with manic energy when he pushed the glasses up, and a blocky blaster strapped to his hip completed the look.

He looked exactly like a two-bit gray-market all-purpose man for hire. A bit of smuggling, maybe some mercenary work here and there, above-board hauling when that was all there was going, and whatever else he could get. This Ren was rakish and dangerous and a little charming, every inch his late father’s son. Hux had several feelings about this, some of which he couldn’t quire parse, but first and foremost among them was a desire to suck Ren off in a dingy backroom someplace that was so visceral it made his knees quake a little, wanting to buckle, and his scalp tingle for want of Ren’s big hands in his hair.

Ren smirked at him and said, “I’m glad you like the look, General, but you’ve got to actually get in the ship if you want to leave.”

“If this pinnace still flies after all the hasty changes you’ve made to it, that is,” Hux snapped back as he strode up the ramp, annoyed both with himself for staring and with Ren for calling him out on it.

“It’s all just cosmetic,” Ren said, waving a hand dismissively. “She looks a little rough, but she’ll still give you as smooth a ride as you’ve ever had.”

Hux swallowed hard, wondering what kind of ride Ren would give him, but quickly pushed the thought aside and asked, “She?”

Ren’s smirk widened into a grin as he stepped aside to let Hux past him and into the ship. “Welcome, partner mine, our home and livelihood, the _Kri Drake,_ a stolen First Order command pinnace that we use to get us from one bounty hunting gig to the next, and to do a bit of light transport on the side. Small arms, mainly—we tried hauling spice once, but half of it went up your nose and we had to sell our last ship to cover our debts. I’m immensely proud of myself for hijacking this one right out from under the Order’s nose.”

That was… quite a story. Hux narrowed his eyes, affronted. “Oh, so you get to be the dashing and talented pirate and I have to be the spice-addled sidekick? I don’t think so.”

“Oh, no, you’re more than that—you’re the trigger man. I’m the pilot and engineer, you’re the guy who actually catches our quarry, more often than not. When the choice is dead or alive, you always pick dead, and you always get your man. I got you some weapons along with a change of clothes.”

Mollified for now by the promise of hardware, Hux followed Ren into the ship’s small bridge, which was really more of a cockpit. Pinnaces were an awkward, in-between size—mostly, they were for ferrying important people around. If Hux had been going to a summit of generals while the _Finalizer_ was needed elsewhere, this very ship is how he would have traveled. They could also serve as small troop transports for precision strikes or as couriers, when necessary. They were meant to be crewed by about ten people, but Hux was certain that he and Ren could make do on their own, together with the ship’s astromech droid, who whistled cheerfully at them as they entered.

Ren sat down in the helmsman’s chair and began bringing the ship to life, working his way through the pre-flight checks. There was a tension about him—there always was, but something about today’s version made Hux nervous. His eyes were a little too wide and his mouth smiled too easily; there was something about the set of his shoulders that plucked at Hux’s most deeply ingrained warning systems. On its face, this was better than the dour, gloomy Ren that so often haunted the _Finalizer’s_ corridors, but it still made Hux uneasy.

Perhaps he was reading too much into it. Ren must’ve been running about like a madman for the past three hours, to pull all this together. He certainly hadn’t had time to sleep. Maybe he was just wired.

“Did you bring any normal clothes?” Ren asked, drawing Hux out of his contemplation.

“I don’t have any civilian clothes,” Hux answered. “I did, however, pick up some unmarked fatigues from stores on my way here.”

Ren pointed at a pile of fabrics in the seat beside him. “Fatigue pants are nondescript enough to pass, but the jacket’s too military. And black’s too close to your usual uniform’s color—you want to wear something General Hux wouldn’t be caught dead in. It’s all going to be too big, but I didn’t have time to get you something special.”

Hux frowned, picking gingerly through the pile of clothes—Ren’s civvies, apparently, not that he exactly wore a uniform—as the ship lifted off. Over the intercom, some ensign or another cleared them to leave the hangar bay and informed them that the forcefield would go down in two minutes.

This probably wouldn’t be too bad… Hux selected a cream-colored wrap shirt and a long gray-green knit vest. He could wrap the shirt tightly and wear the vest open, which ought to make him look a little less like he was playing dress-up in a much larger man’s clothes. There were a few lengths of unfinished fabric that he supposed were what passed for scarves in the less civilized regions of space—he looked longingly at a black one, but selected a pale blue one instead.

“You can throw those wherever,” Ren said. “It’s always better to sit down until we’re in hyper.”

“Yes, thank you, Ren, I do understand the concept of acceleration,” Hux replied waspishly, annoyed at having to haul Ren’s laundry around. He tossed the pile onto another seat, grimacing at its unfolded, wrinkly disorder. “Though I’m a little concerned about this flight if you can’t even get us into hyperspace smoothly.”

Ren shot him a dark look and then maxed out the ship’s acceleration, knocking Hux back into his seat just as he was about to sit down properly. Then he abruptly let up and slammed the lever for reverse thrusters, very nearly pitching Hux to the deck.

Ren’s spare clothes all went flying. Hux sure as hell wasn’t picking them up.

Hux took a deep breath in through his nose, resisting, with difficulty, the urge to punch his Supreme Leader directly in the face. He turned to glare at the other man and had to redouble his efforts at self-control—Ren was practically radiating smug amusement.

“ _You—”_ Hux started, but he had to break off and start again. He was so irritated, so astonished, that he had been rendered nearly inarticulate. “You could have broken my nose, you childish— impulsive—unthinking _banthafucker_!”

“I’d have caught you,” Ren said, making a weird expression with his mouth that was probably a badly suppressed smile.

Hux made a strangled noise, envisioning the scenario—Ren catching him mid-fall with the Force, only to dump him on the ground once he’d reached a distance where he was unlikely to hurt anything. It would have been humiliating.

“Are you going to be like this the entire time?” Hux asked a moment later, once he’d calmed down. He was genuinely curious as to how Ren might respond.

“Mmm…. Probably,” Ren admitted, his tone something that might have been apologetic, if he had been a different sort of man.

“Great,” Hux said with a sigh, settling into his seat.

Hux lamented the fact that he had ever thought this would be a good idea.

 

* * *

 

“You should change,” Ren said, a little while later, once they were in hyperspace. “And think of a name and backstory, if you don’t have one already.”

“No one’s going to be asking us about our lives, Ren, it doesn’t matter what fake backstory I have,” he replied, exasperated.

“Of course it does. That’s part of making them see what you want them to see—if you’re still General Hux, you’re still General Hux. The clothes’ll help, but you need to be someone else, even if it’s only a little different.”

“What are you even talking about? And how the hell do you know about this stuff? You’re no more an undercover operative than I am,” Hux groused.

“Snoke had me do some covert work as part of my training. Assassinations, mainly,” Ren replied.

“Tell me about your… who you’re going to be, then.”

Ren began, startling Hux by changing his voice subtly, crisping up his speech, changing the shape of his vowels from mildly Mid-Rim to mildly Core.

“The name’s Hallie, Arath Hallie. I’m the son of a minor dignitary in the former New Republic, a guy called Perek Hallie who died on Hosnian Prime. I’ve always been a bit of a black sheep, never interested in the family business of politics, and I left home at sixteen to seek my fortune. Tried a bit of this and that, but it turned out that I’m best at flying and killing. So, here I am, bounty hunter extraordinaire.

“My favorite food is roast klek-beast, though I also have a fondness for Corellian spiced ice. I don’t have much—I tend to spend all my payouts on booze (whiskey, preferably), gambling (jom-ka or races of any kind), and beings of negotiable virtue (the more exotic, the better.)”

Back in his normal voice, Ren added, “Hallie is a bit of a self-conscious wastrel, makes a show out of being a low-life, even though he grew up a rich brat.”

Hux was actually a little impressed. Hallie was enough like Ren, from what he knew of Ren’s background, that he should be able to play the character easily. But he was different enough that no listener would meet Hallie and instantly think ‘Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order.’

“Did you think all this up just now?” Hux asked curiously.

Ren looked away; replied only, “No.”

This persona, his extensive civilian wardrobe, his ability to drop everything and turn himself into someone else… Hux stared at him in dawning alarm. “Ren… Supreme Leader… Don’t tell me you’ve been thinking about _running_. Not now, not after everything.”

Hux had so much more work to do politically before he could replace Ren. This wasn’t the time for another change in leadership, that much he knew.

“Of course not,” Ren snapped, fixing him with a ‘discussion closed’ look.

He didn’t often wish for Ren’s abilities, but sometimes, he dearly wished he could open up that thick skull and find out what went on inside it. Still concerned enough to press on, Hux asked, “Then why are you so prepared for all this?”

“It’s nothing. I’m not going to abandon the Order—even if I didn’t give a damn about my responsibilities, there are still things I want to achieve. But sometimes I do wonder what it would like to truly be free,” Ren said seriously, staring out the forward window. “Don’t you, General?”

“Not really,” Hux answered, seeing no reason to lie. “It sounds so… pointless. What would Hallie or someone like him have to show for all their work? Nothing. Who would remember his name after he died? No one. There and gone, like a stray comet. What’s to envy in that?”

Ren just shook his head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

Hux let it lie for now and went to change into his clothes, pondering his undercover persona. Unlike, apparently, Ren, Hux couldn’t really imagine what he’d like to be if he wasn’t an officer in the First Order. Ren couldn’t have been a nobody if he tried, not with a bloodline like that, but Hux… Hux could have very easily been no one at all. Maybe that was the difference between them, or one of them—Ren daydreamed about freedom and anonymity he could never have, whereas Hux didn’t like to contemplate what would have become of him if he hadn’t been clever and ruthless enough to make something of himself.

He’d have ended up a stormtrooper, perhaps, or a cook. A fisherman—that was a common enough job for men of his mother’s class on Arkanis. He might have liked to be a scholar or an engineer, designing ships or something rather than weapons, but he couldn’t imagine what the world would have to have been like for him to have been any such thing.

Kellan, he thought, choosing a name almost at random. He’d known a Kellan, as a child—one of the other cook’s sons. Yes, he’d just lift the boy’s name wholesale—the persona wouldn’t have to stand up to any deep investigation, after all. So, he’d be Kellan Renary. An unremarkable Arkanisian name for an unremarkable Arkanisian man. Redheaded humans were uncommon enough in the galaxy at large and common enough on Arkanis that it made sense stay with the same planet of origin—if anyone mentioned his resemblance to a certain General Hux, he could laugh and say that maybe they were distant relatives.

Hux peered into the fresher’s mirror, finding that he still looked like himself, just in someone else’s clothes. He tried relaxing his stance, but it looked strange and artificial. He rolled his shoulders and stretched from side to side, twisting his hips—he needed to loosen up, if he didn’t want to give away that he was military. He gave the mirror a little smirk as he tried to pretend he’d had a few drinks. There. That was better.

When he returned to the bridge, attempting to amble rather than strut, Ren stood and greeted him with a cocked head and a critical frown. “You look like an officer on shore leave, which I guess is an improvement, but still isn’t what we’re going for. Let me—“

Ren reached out, and Hux flinched away instinctively but then settled when he detected no aggression in Ren’s posture. More curious than anything—Ren was still baffling to him, even after knowing him so long—he allowed Ren to do whatever it was that he was doing, which turned out to be mussing Hux’s hair.

Ren’s long, blunt fingers combed through his neatly parted and gelled hair, ruffling it against the grain, nails dragging along his scalp. This was no perfunctory fluff; Ren seemed determined to work all the product out of it, twisting stubborn pieces between his fingers, combing out all the gelled-together clumps, even going so far as to skritch at his scalp with his fingertips in an attempt to get the hair to fall in a different pattern than the one to which it was accustomed. It felt extremely good, and Hux was going to stop him any minute now.

He failed to do this entirely, letting Ren continue with his ministrations for far longer than was entirely decent. He’d always been a sucker for having his hair touched, and it had been so long since anyone had done so—since anyone had touched him at all. He wondered idly if Ren could tell how much he was enjoying this, and how he felt about it if he could. His body wanted him to push his head up against Ren’s hand like an affectionate cat, eager for further petting, but he restrained himself. It was far harder than it should have been.

This was a very weird situation, Hux noted almost abstractly, and not one he’d ever expected to find himself in. It didn’t feel altogether uncomfortable despite how utterly odd it was, though he was very aware of how close they were standing. Hyperaware, almost, of the negative space between them. This was bad, really bad—he did a fine job denying himself the pleasure of human touch entirely, but now that he’d had a little taste after so long, he wanted more.

He wanted to press himself full-length against Ren, wanted to wrap his arms around him. Wanted, especially, to feel Ren’s arms around him. It wasn’t so much that Ren’s touch aroused him—though it did, a little—mostly, he just wanted Ren to keep touching him, any way he saw fit _._ He could feel the warmth of Ren’s body just the tiniest bit, and he wanted more. He could smell a hint of some spicy scent, soap or aftershave or something, and though it was strange to think of Kylo Ren using scented cosmetics, he wanted to chase that scent, to bury his nose in the crook of Ren’s neck. Weak, he was still so kriffing weak sometimes, and even as he thought it he couldn’t bring himself to pull away.

When Ren finally stepped back, he tilted his head, looking at Hux critically, a tiny smirk playing about one corner of his mouth. ( _Don’t look at his mouth!_ Hux scolded himself. _Don’t think about it!_ ) To his horror, Hux felt himself flush under the scrutiny. He felt naked under Ren’s appraising gaze, knowing as he did that the man could read his thoughts as easily as if they were printed on his forehead. It was embarrassing, but somehow less unpleasant than usual. Ren wasn’t likely to find anything he didn’t already know at this point.

Hux failed in his internal directive not to look at or think about Ren’s mouth as he watched the other man lick his lips, then suck the bottom one between his teeth for a moment. Stars, he wanted to kiss him. ( _Kiss_ him? This was truly getting out of hand.)

“I did too good a job,” Ren decided, stepping back in to mess with his hair some more. “I can’t let you go out like this.”

“Why not?” Hux asked, not even sure why he was arguing. He didn’t want to go out with his hair a mess, either. “You aren’t my stylist, my messy hair won’t reflect on you personally.”

“You look _obscene_ ,” Ren said, his voice so terribly low and soft, his face so close to Hux’s, “Like I’ve been running my hands through your hair, like I’ve been pulling it. Like you’ve been on your knees for me very recently, and I just couldn’t keep my hands to myself.”

_Fuck._ The pang of arousal that shot through Hux was so strong it almost hurt, his stomach clenching and his fatigue pants suddenly far too tight.

“So, what? Would it be so detrimental to our cover stories if people thought Hallie was fucking his partner?” Hux asked, proud of himself for sounding only a little huskier than usual.

Ren finished with his hair, finger-combing one side down over his forehead. He lowered his hands slowly, seeming almost reluctant. This time, he didn’t step back. “Hallie wouldn’t want to show off how good you looked like that. He’s too possessive. If we were, as you say, _fucking_ , he wouldn’t want anyone else to see you with a hair out of place. That’s only for him.”

Stars. _Stars_. Hux wanted him, wanted him so badly he could scream. His belly felt like it was full of embers, and he never wanted it to stop.

“That might be a problem,” Hux told him, their lips inches apart. “Kellan’s a contrary soul, and he likes to be looked at. He’d gladly walk out the door swollen-mouthed and still flushed, opening his shirt collar to show off your bite marks, all just to piss you off.”

Ren sucked in a harsh little breath, and his hands grabbed for Hux’s hips, holding on tight. “Hallie doesn’t take well to being deliberately provoked.”

“Oh? What’s he going to do about it?”

Ren leaned down, his lips right up against Hux’s ear, the touch making him shudder. He whispered, “He’d drag you back to the ship and fuck you so hard you could barely stand, then refuse to even let you clean up. We’d go right back out, and you’d have to go about your business with shaking knees and a sore ass, with m—with his come leaking out of you and your own all over your chest and belly. Since that’s what you seemed to want.”

Hux was so hard he thought he might die. He wanted more than anything to reach out and tug Ren’s hips against his, to grind against him and feel if he was as into this as Hux was, but somehow, he didn’t. He didn’t want to be the first one to break. Pulling Ren to him would mean a forfeiture of whatever game they were playing, and Hux didn’t want to lose, especially not to him.

So, he turned his head so that his lips were a hair’s breadth from Ren’s neck and said, “You think that’s how it would go? You’d screw Kellan senseless and then go out looking cool as a cucumber? I don’t think so. Kellan’s been around—he’s more than capable of leaving you a complete wreck. He’d make you work for it, wouldn’t tolerate anything but your best. I hope, for your sake, that Hallie has some serious stamina. Once you’d pleased him to his satisfaction, he’d flip you over and ride you so well you’d come screaming.”

Ren shuddered, a fine tremor running through his whole body. He was breathing hard, just a little, but then again, so was Hux.

The moment stretched out endlessly, both of them standing there, Ren’s hands on his hips, Hux’s lips grazing Ren’s neck. Neither of the moved. It was like they were frozen, unwilling to give in but, in Hux’s case at least, too kriffing turned on to think of anything more to say.

Hux drew a deep breath, and, with an act of will heretofore unparalleled in his life, stepped back, pulling out of Ren’s hold. He almost lost his resolve when he met Ren’s eyes, saw them his eyes half-lidded and fixed on Hux’s mouth, his pupils blown wide and black. He looked as dazed with arousal as Hux felt, if not worse. Stars, he looked like he’d let Hux do anything he wanted to him.

Hux cleared his throat and gave sounding normal his best attempt, which probably wasn’t very good given that Ren was now staring hungrily at the front of his pants where the line of his dick had to be clearly visible. “If we’re going to be walking into a den of thieves, we’d be better off doing it fresh. Neither of us got much sleep last night thanks to events, so I’m going to go bunk down for a while, and I’d advise you do the same.

With that, he turned on his heel walked away. He imagined that he could physically feel Ren’s gaze on his ass as he walked to the door.

He’d won that round, Hux thought, sighing in relief as he made it out the door. It had been a near thing. He’d also have won, he thought, if Ren had caved and pulled Hux to him, or had kissed him, or something.

He’d have won the battle, but perhaps he might have ultimately lost the war. The two of them were teetering on the edge of something truly inadvisable, and Hux wasn’t sure his own self-control, let alone Ren’s, was enough to keep them from tipping over into disaster. He’d been able to walk away from Ren’s whispered words, but would he have been able to walk away from Ren’s mouth on his neck, Ren’s hands on his bare skin?

Probably not. He’d either have to keep the two of them away from the edge, or find some way where he had a chance at controlling the trajectory of their fall.

Later. He’d deal with it later. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a problem, back on the _Finalizer_ , where things were normal. For now, they’d concentrate on the mission. He was a professional, and Ren was the kriffing Supreme Leader—surely the two of them could keep their eyes on the target.

When Hux made it back to his room he’d claimed for himself on the pinnace, his hand was on his zipper almost before the door could close behind him. As he reached down and took himself in hand, he wondered if Ren was doing the same, his big hand wrapped around his (likely equally big) cock, imagining Hux’s hands on him instead. He bet Ren was gorgeous in the throes of pleasure, and he was almost certain that Ren would be loud. He was probably in the bridge right now, head thrown back, biting his lip to try and smother his moans.

It took Hux an embarrassingly short amount of time to bring himself off, and then he staggered to the bed and tipped over backwards into it, staring at the ceiling unseeingly until exhaustion claimed him and he fell into a troubled sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing much happened in this chapter--next time, we're back to the action! Our boys land on Point Nadir and go in search of Reetha Anjiliac, but between Kylo's impulsive behavior and Hux's less-than-convincing bounty hunter routine, it's going to be hard for them not to find more trouble than they were looking for...


	6. Spaceship Interlude, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our protagonist makes a plan, but fails, as usual, to consider the human element.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a sort of bonus chapter. I sat down to start the 'Adventure on Point Nadir' part of this story, but another chapter of flirting-on-a-spaceship just wrote itself.

When Hux awoke, he knew he’d had troubling dreams but couldn’t quite recall what they were. He thought that maybe he’d dreamed about being someone else, one of those lives he’d tried to imagine. He tried to remember, but all he got were fleeting impressions—sand falling through his fingers, the _thwack_ of a heavy knife against a wooden cutting board, soft lips under his and a feeling like _don’t go._

“Hux!” the pinnace’s intercom said, in a loud and irritated fashion that indicated it had been calling him for some time now. “Hux, I’m not your kriffing alarm clock. Wake the fuck up, we’re here.”

“Stop swearing at me,” Hux groaned, half talking into his pillow. “I’m tired.”

There was a moment of taken-aback silence from the intercom, and it was then that Hux woke up enough to realize what was going on and who he was talking to. The lingering, almost-pleasant ache of melancholy from his dreams quickly vanished, replaced by embarrassment and regret, both over showing his sleepy vulnerability just now and over what had happened (and worse, what had nearly happened) previously.

The intercom laughed, just a soft little huff of a sound. Hux liked it. He wanted to hear it again. Ren said, “I should have come over to wake you in person—you’re cute when you’re sleepy.”

Hux felt his cheeks and the tips of his ears begin to burn. He forced himself to sit up, scrubbing his hands over his face. It felt like the bunk was pulling on him with some unseen energy—he wanted to go back to sleep so badly, not least because it would mean he wouldn’t have to face Ren just yet.

“I’ll be there shortly, Supreme Leader. Hux out,” he snapped off crisply, attempting to remind Ren to keep it professional, despite the fact that he himself was currently entertaining a fantasy of curling up under the covers and going back to sleep, this time with Ren’s big, warm body wrapped around him.

This vision was pleasant to contemplate until Hux realized just what he was contemplating. The horror of that realization propelled him up and out of bed, left him standing there half-awake and wholly appalled with himself. He recognized the symptoms, had seen them in others and even experienced them once or twice himself, long ago—he had a _crush._

Wanting Ren was one thing. He was a powerful, physically attractive man, and also kind of an asshole. These were all traits that Hux enjoyed in his lovers. Plus he was always around these days, taking up a great deal of Hux’s time and attention. And he’d stopped wearing that awful mask, exposing Hux to his unconventional handsomeness day-in and day-out. Furthermore, it seemed likely that someone so openly passionate would, with a little direction, be an excellent lay. So, it only made sense that he’d want to fuck Ren. But wanting to kiss him, wanting to embrace him, wanting to hear him laugh? Fantasizing about sleeping, actually _sleeping_ , cuddled up with him?

No. This wasn’t a crush, it was an aberration. It wasn’t even about Ren. Rather, it was about his failure to take care of his own needs. Just like lack of sleep made one sloppy and prone to overly emotional responses, lack of sex (or possibly lack of touch, generally speaking, but as he didn’t exactly go around hugging people, he couldn’t say for sure) could compromise one’s judgement, could promote weakness and neediness. He knew this, and it was exactly why he had argued against inhibiting (chemically or through conditioning) sexual behavior among the troopers.

Hux was a grown adult. Hux was a general of the First Order. Hells, he was the _kriffing Starkiller._ Worlds had died by his command. He did not, could not, _would not,_ have something so juvenile as a crush, and even if he did, it certainly wouldn’t be on Kylo Ren. It was just lust and a bit of misdirected emotional spillover.

He’d make it through this mission, then he’d put in for some shore leave. He never had a problem getting laid when he actually got around to trying, so that was exactly what he’d do. Pick up some lucky individual, take him back to his hotel room, and give him the weekend of his life. He would return cured, and all this weirdness with Ren would be dismissed as a side effect of their taking on alter-egos for this mission. Eventually, it would be forgotten, and their working relationship would be restored.

Good, then. That was settled. Hux had a plan of action. He felt better, now; he always felt better when he had a plan. This did not explain the strange, sinking feeling in his gut that he had while contemplating his return to professionalism with Ren, but he wasn’t overly concerned with it. He hadn’t eaten in stars-knew-how-long, so it wasn’t surprising his stomach hurt.

* * *

It was only a few minutes later that he made his way onto the bridge, a cup of steaming caf in one hand and a pair of rat bars in the other. He’d considered stopping to shave as he hadn’t had the chance since yesterday morning, but being slightly fuzzy would only suit his appearance as a man of ill-repute, so he hadn’t. He was still a little sleepy after crashing so hard and sleeping for too short of a time, and it felt strange to be up and about in this state. He wanted to go back to his quarters aboard the _Finalizer,_ shower and shave and use one of the stims he hadn’t thought to bring with him, and only then would he truly feel fit for human company.

But Ren barely qualified as human company, strange creature that he was. As Hux entered the room, the man in question greeted him with a smirk. “Sleeping beauty finally awakes, I see.”

“At least I have the sense to sleep during downtime,” Hux shot back, throwing a ration bar at his head. If he hadn’t slept—and he clearly hadn’t, those too-wide eyes underscored by a pair of dark circles—he probably hadn’t eaten, either.

Ren caught the bar with the Force and made it begin to unwrap itself in midair, looking up at Hux like he expected him to be impressed.

“You’re absurd,” Hux snapped, taking a seat and unwrapping his own rat bar, tearing the wrapper with his teeth and then opening with his hands, like a normal person.

He looked up at the forward window, which showed nothing but the black of space. “We seem to be less ‘here’ than you said.”

“I lied. We’re twenty minutes out on the normal-space approach vector I got from Wekk. I wanted time to get ready,” Ren said, talking with his mouth full, the cretin. “We’re probably about to be hailed.”

“You could have simply said so,” Hux pointed out, annoyed. He wasn’t the kind of person who needed to be _handled._ “And is that going to be a problem?”

“No. We’ve got codes, as well. I doubt there’ll be any issue, and if there is, I’ll probably be able to talk us in.”

Hux raised an eyebrow. “You can cloud minds at this distance? What if you’re talking to a droid?”

“I won’t need to,” Ren said, looking away, his expression turning strange. “I learned how to run a scam practically as soon as I could walk.”

Of course. “Well,” said Hux, somewhat awkwardly, “I hope you’ve been keeping in practice.”

Ren shot him an amused look. “Do you, now?”

Hux supposed not. In fact, the thought was rather alarming.

He was, however, saved from having to respond by a bleep from the comms system. He peered at the short message that flashed up on the display: “Identify and input access code.”

Ren tapped in a sequence of numbers and letters, then thumbed the send key. The console bleeped again a moment later: “Proceed to docking bay, _Kri Drake._ ”

“There, easy. Don’t even have to talk to anyone unless you kriff it up somehow,” Ren pronounced. “Now, I believe it’s time for you to see the part of your kit that you’re actually going to like. It’s on the officers’ dining table.”

Hux stood and went without comment, curious as to whether the promised hardware would actually live up to Ren’s enthusiasm.

Ren followed, practically stepping on his heels, apparently eager to see Hux’s reaction to his gifts.

(Hux wanted to say something cutting about this, but he was too charmed to think of anything good.)

* * *

 

When they entered the room, the first thing that caught Hux’s eye was the long, black case laid out open on the table. He went over to inspect it, eyes going wide when he saw what was inside.

“Is this an Imperial TK-50?” Hux asked, knowing that it was. “Where in all the heavens did you pull this out from?”

“I took it off of an enemy, ages ago. Felt like the thing to do at the time, but I’ve never come up with a use for it before now. It’s yours.”

“For the mission? It’s a crying shame I likely won’t get a chance to use it. A gun like this deserves better than being carried as a prop.” There wasn’t going to be much call for a long-range blaster rifle on this one, not even one that was reputed to be one of the best ever made.

“No. It’s _yours._ ”

Hux tore his eyes away from the weapon—it was beautiful, even disassembled—to stare at Ren incredulously. “Ren, a piece like this has got to be worth tens of thousands of credits, if not more. There were fewer than a hundred ever made, and fewer still survived the end of the Empire.”

“Well, I didn’t pay for it. And I’m hardly going to sell it.”

“It’s a… gift?”

“Yes,” Ren said, ducking his head. He looked almost shy, and along with the awkwardness of his features, it made him look terribly boyish.

Hux felt a minor pang at accepting it in light of his new resolve to keep things professional, but he hadn’t gotten where he was by looking gift kleefeks in the eyestalks.

“I won’t get much of a chance to use it outside of a firing range,” Hux said, stroking a finger along the gun’s long barrel. “But… perhaps I can engineer some reason for a brief return to the field.”

“I’ll take you,” Ren said, stepping closer to him. “Next time I want someone killed. Or next time you do. Say the word, and I’ll take you somewhere you can really put that to use.”

“And what would you do on this little excursion?” Hux asked, his heart beating too fast for reasons he didn’t entirely understand.

“Watch,” Ren said, popping the word off his lips with relish.

Hux did his best to ignore the roil of heat that skittered down his stomach at that. “It’s boring,” he warned, “Waiting for hours.”

“I’m sure I could find some way to amuse myself,” Ren assured him, holding Hux’s gaze with his own. Hux was sure he could, too, though he was adamant it wouldn’t be what Ren’s eyes suggested it might. An image flashed through his mind, sudden and crystal-clear: Ren’s weight on top of him as he lay on his stomach, his hips pressed up hard against Hux’s ass, grinding against him through their clothes, pressing him down into some rooftop somewhere; Ren’s teeth on the back of his neck as he looked through the rifle’s scope, waiting for his target to appear.

“Very well,” Hux agreed, snapping the words out as he tried to clear the image out of his head. “It’s a date.”

“Is it?” Ren asked, smile widening.

He hadn’t meant it like that. He hadn’t meant it at all. He’d been distracted… His cheeks felt hot as he frowned and said, “It’s a figure of speech, Ren.”

Ren did not seem deterred, his eyes glittering.

Hux turned away abruptly, and began to examine the rest of the gear. There seemed to be an awful lot of it.

“I was thinking your persona, your Kellan, would be the bristling-with-weapons type, whereas I’d go a bit more lightly armed, just a blaster and a long knife.”

Ren turned his back on Huxand reached under his hair to draw a long knife from a sheath beneath his shirt, strapped between his shoulder blades.

Hux swallowed hard. His mouth was dry, and his mind was busy speculating about what must be holding that sheath in place. Some kind of harness, crossing over his chest in at least two, probably three places, in order to keep the knife—more of a machete, really—from being too conspicuous. Probably a pair of vertical or diagonal straps as well, one on each side for stability. He wanted desperately to see it, the durable black plastifiber or possibly even _leather_ against Ren’s pale skin, the way the tight straps would emphasize Ren’s impressive chest, the knife itself nestled against his body, the tip of the sheath grazing the small of his back.

Hux was excessively fond of harnesses in a purely recreational context, and the addition of a deadly weapon only made the idea more appealing. For himself, he preferred to either be nude or fully dressed (though he had been persuaded into lingerie a time or two and thoroughly enjoyed the experience,) but on a partner, there was nothing quite like a few strips and straps to complement the lines of a man’s body, especially one as muscular as Ren’s.

He’d been silent too long. He had to say something. “You won’t bring your lightsaber?”

“No. It would be nice to have if things get really rough, but if we get searched, which is unlikely but possible, it would draw too much attention. The more suspicious someone is, the harder it is to influence their mind, and if they’re both strong-willed and extremely on guard, even a non-Force sensitive can be highly resistant,” Ren explained, carefully re-sheathing the knife and turning back around. “I don’t expect we’ll have to fight our way out of this, in any case.”

“For someone not expecting a fight, you certainly brought a great deal of weaponry,” Hux pointed out.

“It may seem to you like I always do things on the fly, but I do like to be adequately prepared, when I can,” Ren said. “This stuff is really mostly for show. I’ve never been to Point Nadir, but from what I know of it, the part we’re going to is going to be full of thugs and mercs even more heavily armed than we are. We wouldn’t fit in, otherwise.”

Hux nodded, and continued perusing the selection. Ren had set out a pair of spring-loaded wrist sheaths for him, which contained a pair of daggers that were somewhat bulkier than the blade he habitually wore in a wrist sheath of his own.

“The one you have is elegant and it suits you better, but these are more useful for an actual knife fight,” Ren offered helpfully. “I can fasten them for you.”

Hux gave him a flat look, disappointed but unsurprised to find that Ren knew about his concealed emergency weapon. Sensing some veiled insult, he asked,“What do you mean, it suits me?”

“Long and slender, kind of sexy, good for stabbing people in the back.”

“Ah.” Hux didn’t have much to say to that, though he was inordinately pleased to hear Ren indirectly describe him as sexy. “And yes, you can fasten it—I can do the left, but I’m not used to having one on the right.”

Hux began to unbutton the unfamiliar cuff of his borrowed shirt, but before he could get to the second button, Ren caught his wrist in one massive hand, the other batting his hand away and working at the buttons himself. This was so shocking that he fell entirely still, unsure what to say, unsure what to do as he looked up at Ren. Their eyes met as Ren undid the third and final button, and Hux’s lips parted on an involuntary gasp as Ren’s thumb caressed the inside of his wrist.

He felt frozen, ensorcelled as Ren’s blunt fingers rolled up the shirt cuff and began to deftly undo the buckles on his wrist sheath. It felt profoundly like being undressed—Ren was stripping him of his defenses, leaving him naked and vulnerable, though only for a moment. The new sheath was made of worn black leather, and there were creases in the bands that indicated they’d been worn heavily by someone with much thicker wrists than Hux.

“Are these yours?” Hux asked softly, the thought of it making something warm curl around itself in his belly.

“Yes,” Ren said, glancing up at Hux through his long, long lashes as he fastened the bands that held the sheath in place. “I haven’t worn them in years, but I used to. I toyed with the idea of being a knives man for a while—I had a whole stock of telekinetic tricks I could do with them. Ultimately, it was a distraction. If I don’t have my saber, I’m stronger with just my fists and the Force.”

Hux huffed out a laugh—he could just picture it. He hadn’t crossed paths with Ren until around the time construction on Starkiller Base began, but he could imagine the young man he’d been years before that, trying to look cool his pair of knives.

Ren scowled at him, and Hux didn’t know if he’d seen the image or was just scowling at the laugh. His expression quickly smoothed out as he let go of Hux’s hand and took up the other one, unbuttoning the shirt cuff carefully. He glanced up at Hux, a question in his eyes that Hux couldn’t quite understand.

“Ren…” Hux whispered, half response to the unspoken question and half protest. This was too much, somehow. There was something almost deferential in the touch, not the crisp, clinical touch of a servant but an act of surrender. The careful way Ren bared his wrist had the weight of a ritual, but it was also strangely domestic, something a wife might do for her husband. It was almost intolerably intimate, yet he couldn’t seem to bring himself to put a stop to it.

His hand looked impossibly delicate, enveloped by Ren’s; his fingers long and spidery by comparison, his wrist fine-boned and pink-pale against Ren’s slightly darker skin. Goal apparently forgotten, or at least set aside, Ren stroked his thumb along the blue veins in Hux’s wrist, achingly gentle.

“I think about your hands all the time,” Ren murmured. He looked up, lips quirking into a small smile. “I think about your hands like you think about my mouth.”

“How do I think about your mouth?” Hux asked, curious but not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“Loudly, often, and in vivid detail,” Ren answered. Well, then.

“I suppose if I denied that, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“No,” Ren agreed, and slowly brought Hux’s wrist to his lips, maintaining their eye contact the whole time.

Hux gasped when Ren’s lips met his skin, so soft and warm, slightly damp in the center. It was such a gentle kiss, almost entirely closed-mouthed, yet it sent heat racing through his body, all these strange and unnameable feelings he’d been having suddenly burned away in a glorious blaze of lust, going up like kindling.

Ren opened his mouth, scraping his teeth over Hux’s wrist, licking and caressing it with his slick, wicked tongue as he looked at him though his lashes. He'd never realized how sensitive his wrists were until he felt Ren sucking at one like the vampire he'd compared him to not long ago, nipping at him like he might bite down at any moment. It felt entirely too good, that heat and pressure--that was _Ren's mouth_ on him, those obscene red lips he'd been dreaming of for weeks now. Hux wanted it, wanted _him._ He wanted everything Ren was offering with a sudden ferocity that would have frightened him, were he not already half out of his mind with desire. He could feel Ren trembling finely as he kissed and nuzzled his way across Hux’s palm, and he thrilled at the sign that Ren was just as lost as he was, just as desperate and needy. 

Hux stared, enraptured as he watched Ren take his middle two fingers into his mouth. He turned his hand palm-down and scissored his fingers once to open Ren's mouth wide, feeling the edges of his teeth, toying with his lips, prodding at his tongue. Ren just _let him_ , looking up at him with eyes gone glassy and dazed.

"Suck," Hux ordered, and Ren did, closing those absurdly plush lips around his fingers and suckling them, bobbing his head like he was sucking Hux's cock instead. His mouth felt perfect, silky-soft and so, so hot. Hux couldn't have suppressed his moan if he'd tried, half-pleasure and half-anticipation at the thought of having the real thing. Ren's expression looked blissful, like there was nowhere else he'd rather be.

Fuck, Hux thought. _Fuck_. He couldn’t take this anymore.

“Get on your knees, Ren,” he whispered. “Right now.”

Ren dropped obediently to the deck with a sigh that sounded almost _relieved._ He didn't release Hux’s hand from his grasp or his fingers from his mouth, and Hux so approved of this that he couldn’t help but bring his free hand up to stroke Ren’s hair.

“That's it. You’re going to be so good for me, aren’t you?”

Ren shivered and opened his eyes; looked up at Hux, nodding his head and making an “Mm-hm” noise around his fingers. It would have been the perfect gesture of submission if not for the cocky set of his brows and the wicked little quirk on one side of his mouth.

Hux was going to shove his cock down Ren’s throat, and then they’d see who was smirking about it.

But not yet. He was shaking with need, they both were, but Ren was so hot like this that Hux didn’t want to move on just yet. Instead, he pressed another finger into Ren’s mouth, three of them sliding over his tongue as he fucked them in and out; curled them around Ren's tongue and pinched it between his fingers before pressing in again, deep enough to be uncomfortable. He thumbed at that little smirk, already mostly faded—

Then the intercom began to whistle and chirr at him. He ignored it, withdrawing his fingers from Ren’s mouth in order to open his fly.

But the intercom—the droid, calling them from the bridge—bleeped emphatically. It was saying something about a landing beacon.

Ren looked up at him, blinking his hazy, lust-drunk eyes as he tried to focus. He opened his mouth to speak, and Hux wanted to stick his fingers in his ears. He knew he didn’t want to hear whatever Ren had to say right now.

“We’re—“ Ren began, but he had to stop and clear his throat. “We’re here. I’ve got to go get us into dock or we’re going to fucking crash in the landing bay and piss everyone off.”

 _“Why,”_ Hux groaned, disappointed unto the point of fury, “Why would you start this now, when you knew—you _knew—_ “

“I didn’t plan on it!” Ren leaned his face against Hux’s leg, his posture radiating misery. Muffled, he said, “I got carried away.”

“Go, then,” Hux said with an exasperated sigh. “Pilot the kriffing ship. I’ll strap this stupid thing on myself.”

Ren got to his feet with a wince, adjusting himself without any attempt not to be obvious about it. Hux closed his eyes in an effort not to see Ren’s hand pressed against his formidable-looking cock as it strained against his pants, but this was not entirely successful, seeing as the image was now seared onto the inside of his eyelids.

He heard Ren walking away, and endeavored kill his lingering arousal by picturing the former Supreme Leader in place of the current one during their activities a few moments ago. This was both remarkably unpleasant and very effective, physically speaking. It did not, however, go any way towards solving the root of the problem—he was absolutely kriffing gone on Kylo kriffing Ren.

Hux took a seat at the table and attempted to fasten the other wrist sheath on himself. He slid the strap through the clasp easily enough, but he couldn’t get it to buckle one-handed. It didn’t help that his normally-steady hands were shaking somewhat. He curled his other hand around, trying to get hold of it, muttering curses all the while, only to slip and drop it on the ground, undoing all the progress he’d made so far.

He picked the thing up and threw it at the bulkhead with a half-coherent shriek of “FUCK!”

The knife sproinged sadly out of the sheath, the mechanism triggered by the impact, and the two fell to the deck side by side.

Hux let his head drop to the table with a solid thunk. He banged it against the unyielding wood a couple times for good measure and fell still, feeling absolutely disconsolate.

Why, for the love of all that was good and orderly in the universe, had he not killed Kylo Ren when he’d had the chance?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) w r i s t s... h a n d s... f i n g e r s i n m o u t h... I like these things, I hope you like them too or this chapter might have been boring to you.
> 
> 2) Next time, we will get back to 'Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions' rather than 'Hot and Bothered Guys Almost Fuck on a Spaceship'--I promise.
> 
> 3) I hope I didn't make Kylo too smooth here. I think he might not be terrible at wooing if he put his mind to it. Thoughts?


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cool Guys returns from hiatus at last! Things are happening!! There's a summary below, in case you don't recall what's going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Story So Far:
> 
> ARMITAGE HUX and KYLO REN have just arrived at the shadowport POINT NADIR via their ship, the KRI DRAKE, to confront REETHA, an underboss of the ANJILIAC KAJIDIC, or Hutt crime family, about an attempt on Hux’s life. Their goal: find the name of the person who ordered his death, and kill them.
> 
> The two FIRST ORDER operatives are playing a dangerous game—they risk political unrest by leaving, and take their lives into their hands in uncharted territory. They’re traveling incognito, posing as bounty hunters ARATH HALLIE and KELLAN RENARY, but are in constant danger of being recognized. Most dangerous of all, the ATTRACTION between the two men remains unresolved but undeniable...

 

Hux never did get that other wrist sheath on. It hardly mattered—it wasn’t like he was short of weapons. He wore one blaster openly at his hip and another concealed in a belly band; a tiny single-shot in an ankle holster, just under the top of his right boot. He also had the knife Ren had fastened on one wrist and a second hidden under his other boot, a microgrenade in each thigh pocket (one stun, one explosive) and the TK-50 slung over his back. It was absolute overkill, but he found himself enjoying the weight of all this armament, slung about his body in an outward manifestation of how dangerous he really was.

Before, he’d struggled to adopt this persona, but now, like this, armed to teeth, it came more easily. He found his clipped stride lengthening, a little more roll in his hips as he walked, hand resting casually on the blaster at his hip. He felt almost naughty, like a child doing something he shouldn’t. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to or one that had ever ended well for him during his actual childhood, but that didn’t stop him enjoying it now, just a little.

“Reetha works out of the back of an unnamed cantina in a part of town called the Nest,” Ren explained quietly as they paid the portmaster for the use of the questionable-looking tethered platform that housed the Kri Drake, one of many small berths inside the large cavern that made up the docking bay. Point Nadir itself was a partially hollowed-out comet, just big enough to house a thriving city, free of any galactic law enforcement. In this chamber, no space was wasted, with ships stacked up and down the walls of the cavern. “It’s a ways from here, so stay close and try to look like you belong.”

Hux nodded. He had no desire to stray too far, after all—this place was alien to him, people of all species scurryingthis way and that, about whatever probably-illegal business they had. He hadn’t seen so many different faces in one place in years—while there was no policy explicitly forbidding non-humans from being in the First Order, they were few and far between.

They walked through the market just on the other side of the docks, full of strange beings selling incomprehensible objects, darting youngsters that Hux thought might be pickpockets, and the sounds of hawking and haggling in a cacophonous mish-mash of languages. Food smells both mouth-watering and stomach-turning assailed his nose, mixed with the dusty tickle of spices and the warm, dank smell of too many bodies in an enclosed space.

It took all Hux had to keep from gawping like the tourist he was. He hadn’t been in a port city in years, and he’d never been in one that wasn’t primarily human. Even when he’d gone out carousing with other young officers, they’d stuck in a group, and kept themselves to bars frequented by their kind—not just humans, but First Order in particular. He wanted to look at things, scour the bits of technological junk for something interesting or useful, but Ren had apparently chosen to look like a man with somewhere to be, winding through a crowd that did not part for them despite their obvious weaponry. Hux had to keep up or risk being stranded.

On the other side of the market cavern, a series of low, arched passageways cut into the wall and led off to parts unknown.

“This way,” Ren murmured, heading into one that was barely taller than him, lit with strips of LEDs that curved into obscurity. Hux followed, annoyed at having to just tag along. He should have made Ren draw out the mental map he’d taken from Wekk rather than just letting him navigate.

They wound through passages, taking turns at forks and intersections according to no pattern that Hux could discern. Sometimes the tunnels widened enough to have some buildings on either side, sometimes they narrowed enough that they had to go single-file, turning sideways to allow people going the opposite direction to pass.

As they wound their way further in, these passers-by started to look more and more like them—not in physical shape, necessarily, but in general aspect and degree of armament. In the market, there had been plenty of people who appeared unarmed, but here, everyone carried a blaster. He didn’t see many children or elders, only lean, dangerous, darting-eyed men and women.

They passed through another, smaller market, filled withcramped stalls with shifty owners. Who, Hux wondered, would buy a sausage roll in a place like this? They turned down an alley that somehow transitioned into another passage before Hux had realized, and then, they were there, standing at the door to an unmarked cantina, listening to the low hubbub of conversation and music coming from within.

Ren paused, throwing him a grin. “Ready, Kellan?” he asked, in that altered accent of his, instantly throwing Hux back to their conversation in the pinnace’s bridge, Ren’s hands in his hair, Ren’s body too close to escape. The way Ren had said his made-up name, breathless with want.

“Just get on with it,” Hux told him, but he smiled back, a small, sharp, warm-bellied thing that he imagined suited his current garb better than his uniform.

Together, they walked inside. The cantina was doing a good business, although it was quiet for a crowd of this size, its patrons mostly clustered in small groups at tables or drinking alone at the bar. In one corner, a band with a female Twi’lek singer played a melancholy song, in another a group of rough-looking young men watched a game of Shebeth-Ta on the holo. They were the loudest, cheering when their team scored.

A tall, rough-looking Mirialan with a scar bisecting his mouth stopped them at the door. “Blasters off. ’S the policy now.”

“Of course,” Ren answered smoothly, but Hux realized with a thrill of alarm that the request had surprised him.

He unslung his TK-50 reluctantly as Ren handed over his own blaster. He took off his sidearm, too, but decided not to hand over his backup weapons unless he had to.

The bouncer placed the weapons in a heavy cabinet and locked it again, then waved Ren by. He did not, however, let Hux pass, turning an appraising look on him. “Don’t try to bluff me, boy. Hand ‘em over.”

Hux’s lips twitched into a contemptuous snarl. “I already did.”

The Mirialan raised one salt-and-pepper eyebrow. “Well, I guess we’ll just see, won’t we? Hold still.”

Black-gloved hands reached for him and Hux jerked away instinctively, bristling, but subsided at the shake of Ren’s head.

“Got anything that’s gonna stick me?”

“Try it and find out, asshole,” Hux answered. Antagonizing this guy was probably unwise, but Kellan was a prickly sort, he’d decided.

The bouncer stepped in close and swept his hands down Hux’s arms, examining but not removing the knife strapped to his wrist—”Boss Lady says only blasters aren’t allowed, but if I see this I’ll throw you out.”

The bouncer gave his wrist a parting squeeze, and the gesture unwillingly reminded him of the way Ren’s hands had carefully cradled his wrist as he buckled them on, and what had happened—what had almost happened—after.

Just then, the Mirialan looked up, and he must have seen something of the recollection on Hux’s face and mistaken it for a reaction to him, because he grinned, sudden and broad, and shifted closer as he ran his hands down Hux’s sides, then his chest.

“Now, now, what have we here?” he asked, voice almost teasing, as he swept his hands down Hux’s front.

Hux sighed and reached for the gun concealed under his shirt, but the bouncer grabbed his wrist before he could go for it. “Allow me. Safety first, yanno.”

Blunt fingers slipped up under Hux’s shirt, then under the elastic that held the blaster in place. He gasped at the shock of it even though he knew it was coming, the feeling of hands on his bare skin as the bouncer drew out his next-to-last blaster. He set it aside and reached for Hux again, big hands sweeping over his hips and thighs, and then up the backs of them, cupping his ass and squeezing.

Hux felt his whole body twitch in shock and affront—how dare he—

“Enough,” Ren rumbled—he’d come up behind Hux without him realizing it, probably glaring the bouncer down over his shoulder. “Get the fuck off him.”

“Fine, fine,” the Mirialan said, still grinning as he backed off, hands up. “Just doing my job.”

“The hells you were,” Ren snapped, reaching for Hux himself, hands settling around his waist as he loomed behind him like a wall of possessive anger, solid and hot and claiming. Was it real? Was it just part of their cover—were they meant to be lovers after all? Was it an act to distract and intimidate the guy into letting him keep his last blaster, the little one in his boot?

“Come get your guns on the way out,” the bouncer said cheerfully, retiring to his stool by the door. Ren snarled and Hux turned in his arms, going along with Ren’s ruse—if ruse it was—and putting his hands on his chest, murmuring, “Come on, Arath, he’s not worth it.”

Huffing in irritation, Ren turned and made his way to the bar. With a mental shrug, Hux followed, sweeping his gaze over the room, taking in the cantina’s assortment of patrons. There was a thin man in black lurking in the corner, carrying himself like he’d gotten even more weapons past the bouncer than Hux, and a Rodian with a collared Togruta girl in his lap holding court near the center. Beside that crew, there was a group of hard-looking women flicking disgusted glances their way.

He and Ren took seats at the bar, and it made the back of Hux’s neck prickle to have his back to the room.

“Now, then, how ‘bout some some Pantoran whiskey if you’ve got it, and a shot of Tatooni bitters for my friend here,” Ren said, giving the bartender an easy, charming smile, any trace of his earlieriler anger gone.

“Sure,” the bartender said, “Opening a tab?”

“No, no—we’re just having a quick one before we go to see the Lady.”

“She expectin’ you?”

“She’s expecting someone else, but the situation got complicated. We’re, how do you say, subcontractors,” Ren explained blithely, looking around like he wasn’t really all that interested. When the bartender glanced at Hux for confirmation, he gave him his best dead-eyed stare—a look which Hux knew was really quite good.

The bartender made an odd face and looked away, turning to exchange a significant glance with an obviously-a-guard lurking by a door in the back. He grunted, and to Hux it had a sound like “well, it’s your funeral.”

Ren paid for their drinks, and when they receiieved them, he raised his to the bartender in a sort of salute before he knocked back about half of it, wincing slightly from the burn but letting out a sound of satisfaction. Hux eyed the dark, cloudy green liquid in front of him dubiously. He’d never even heard of Tatooni bitters, but apparently it was Kellan’s drink of choice, so he took a cautious sip. It was, in fact, very bitter, and since it was served in a shot glass, he felt like he ought to just down it and get it out of the way.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ren watching, smirking as he bared his throat to throw the shot back. Of course, he thought. Ren had ordered this just to make Hux’s life difficult.

When the liquor met his tongue, he fought to keep the grimace his mouth wanted to curl into from forming—ugh. The feel of it, though, the cool herbal burn as it slid down his throat, was actually kind of nice. He turned to Ren and pronounced, “Not bad.”

Ren’s lips twitched and he shrugged, admitting defeat in his attempt to make Hux choke. It would take more than that, Hux thought, half-smiling back.

He half-turned, watching the band but observing the room at large through his peripheral vision, as Ren finished his drink. He imagined they must look like men attempting to gain some liquid courage, which, he supposed, was only fitting.

When Ren set his glass down, he turned to look at the guard in the back, who nodded and waved them over.

So, they went.

The guard ushered them into a back room, and Hux fought not to recoil from the fetid swamp stink of it, like algae and dead amphibians. The room was set up as a massive garden and sauna, filled with strange plants and slaves pouring cloudy green-brown water over hot stones. In the center sat a Hutt, who could only be Reetha, greenish and massive, her skin glistening with condensed steam.

A rusty, inexplicably cat-eared protocol droid sat beside her, in the position of a favored pet, and five men who seemed to be dual purpose bodyguards and eye-candy, all of them bristling with weapons but barely dressed, surrounded the odd pair. She said something in Huttese, and the protocol droid creaked to its feet, moving jerkily towards them.

“The Lady wishes to know who you gentlemen are,” it translated.

“Hallie and Renary, at your service. We’re subcontractors,” Ren explained. “Wekk sent us. She was unavoidably detained—some old debts, you see—so we took out her target for her, and now we’re here to collect the bounty.”

Reetha spoke, and the protocol droid said, “The Lady requires proof.”

Ren took a small holodisplay from his pocket and offered it to the droid, who held it up to the Hutt before pressing the button to play the holo.

It showed a recording they’d taken as soon as they’d concocted this plan, right after the attempt on Hux’s life. The holo showed Hux lying face-down in his blood-soaked bed, still in his equally bloody undergarments, looking entirely dead. Hux had been skeptical of this plan, as he’d thought it unwise to remind Reetha of his face when he was standing right there, but Ren had insisted that it wouldn’t make a difference because Hutts were just that bad at recognizing human faces.

Apparently, he’d been right, and she grunted her approval and ordered one of the men to pay them.

“Thank you, Lady Reetha,” Ren said graciously. “There’s just one more thing. I need to know who ordered the hit on General Hux.”

Reetha laughed, an unmistakable dry, choking sound, and had her protocol droid say “The lady says, why would I want to destroy my own reputation?”

“You will tell us, Lady Reetha, because it’s in your best interest,” Ren told her, his voice taking on a low, hypnotic quality that made Hux want to tell him, even though he didn’t know. This was the riskiest part of the plan—some Hutts were immune to mind tricks. Ren was willing to gamble and to improvise if they failed, and Hux hadn’t been able to think of a good Plan Besh. “You will tell us, because Hux’s lover will pay to have his real murderer killed.”

The Hutt shifted uneasily, her great bulk susurrating against the stone floor.

“You will tell us, and we will make you a great deal of money,” Ren insisted, fingers twitching at his side.

Reetha said something to the droid, and it turned back to her, burbling something incredulous but incomprehensible in mechanical Huttese. Reetha made a rude-sounding noise and the droid, cringing, turned back to them and said uncertainly, “General Alouis Rortica ordered the death of his compatriot.”

Rortica. Hux seethed, incensed that Rortica would stoop so low as to contract out his killing. The man was a general of the First Order! Didn’t he have an assassin on staff? Otherwise, it didn’t surprise him. After that holo-meeting a few weeks ago, Rortica had cause to think that Hux had the Supreme Leader’s ear, and Hux was sure the old pervert imagined that it was because he was sharing his bed. Hux should have killed Rortica when he had the chance, when he’d been then-Captain Hux’s CO.

“Thank you, Lady,” Ren said, breaking into Hux’s dark thoughts, and bowed. Hux followed suit, still playing the silent, stoic gunman, trying not to radiate his anger towards Rortica. They backed out of the room and into the bar, and Hux allowed himself to let out a silent sigh of relief. They’d done it.

His relief lasted only a moment, because Ren leaned down and murmured into his ear, “We’ve got about thirty seconds before she realizes what happened.”

Icy fear slid down Hux’s spine, and he stared wide-eyed at Ren for half a second until his brain kicked into gear and he turned, scanning the room—only one exit. They could make it, but Reetha’s eye-candy thugs would come after them, and they knew the territory. Bolting was not the best option. They needed a distraction.

“Follow my lead,” Hux muttered, and then swayed dramatically and began to stagger his way over towards the hotshot with the slave girl he’d noticed earlier.

“Hey, banthafucker! Where’s my 500 credits, huh?” Hux called loudly, slurring his words just slightly and dropping into the broad Outer Rim drawl he’d heard often as a child.

“Who the fuck are you, then?,” the Rodian sneered, not even bothering to get up from his sprawl, though the Togruta girl wisely slid off his lap and backed up a few steps.

“I’m the guy who you bet five hundred credits that the—” Hux glanced at a sports holo in the corner, where a group of guys clad in maroon and orange were watching avidly, “Mandalore Maracats were going to lose!”

The fans in the corner turned from their game and stared at the Rodian, who, sensing the rising tension, got to his feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of my kriffing face, human.”

Everyone was watching now, all eyes on them. “Don’t you remember? You said they were a bunch of pathetic, beaten-down has-beens, and bet me five hundred credits that they’d lose, but my team won!”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life!”

“Liar!” Hux shouted, reaching a clumsy hand towards him.

The Rodian swung, a sloppy haymaker that Hux ducked easily before coming up and driving his fist into the Rodian’s gut.

He stumbled back, coughing, and his buddies turned to Hux with murder in their eyes. The Maracats fans, though, all cheered as the Rodian struggled for breath, and flung themselves up to defend their apparent fellow-fan. The fight was on.

Hux spun, avoiding a blow from one of the Rodian’s companions, and saw out of the corner of his eye that the group of women had joined the fray, one of them darting in to grab the Togruta girl and pull her out of the way, the rest of them backing up the Maracats fans. Hux smiled to himself grimly—the Rodian was just as unpopular as he’d thought.

Hux weaved through the mass, throwing punches and elbows, ducking under attempts to grab him. Pain exploded across Hux’s jaw as one of the crew connected, staggering him, but then his opponent was falling, collapsing in a heap, and there was a hand on his shoulder. He grabbed for it out of reflex, ready to try a half-forgotten throw, but it was Ren’s hand, massive and familiar, and he followed the line of his arm up to see Ren’s grinning face. He had a spatter of blood across one cheek, and Hux had the irrational urge to lick it off.

Hux flashed him a nasty little smile and they turned as one, making their way through the fray—which had by now consumed the entire cantina except for one or two holdouts—towards the locker that held their blasters.

It was slow going, slower than he’d like, and they were only about halfway across the room when they heard a shriek echo from the back room, a Huttese cry that could only be “Get them!”

The door opened, and her guards spilled out, but stopped short at the sight of the chaos in the room.

A pair of guys—who knew who the fuck they were—sprang at Ren from both sides, trying to flank him, but he dodged the first one’s fist and grabbed him by the hair, throwing him into his friend. It sent them reeling back, leaving them open, and the first one screamed as Hux’s boot connected with his kneecap. They fell back, going down hard, becoming an obstacle that tripped another pair of combatants and sent a third staggering. It would have been funny, Hux thought disconnectedly, if he’d been watching it at a distance.

His world tilted as something collided with him—something big, something heavy, bearing him down in a slow-motion realization that he was going to end up on his back on the floor, and the sure knowledge that if he did, he was as good as dead. He flicked his wrist to release the dagger in his sleeve as they went down, the spring-loaded mechanism thwacking the hilt into his palm, and drove it up as they hit the floor, tearing through his attacker’s shirt and driving it into his belly.

He shoved at the weight on top of him, but it was too heavy, he couldn’t—he heard Ren shout his name and then something ripped the injured man off him. Hux rolled to his feet, panting, and they started forward again, hyperaware of the half-dressed goons on the other side of the room but coming towards them. They’d been spotted.

They exchanged a look, and by mutual assent, they decided that the time for throwing punches was over. Drawing attention to themselves didn’t matter anymore--they needed to get their weapons, and they needed to get out of here. Hux drew his other knife from his boot, and Ren reached under his hair to grab the hilt of his machete, drawing it out from the spine sheath hidden under his shirt.

They weren’t the only ones. A quick glance around told Hux the fight had escalated, too much tension between the different groups forced into boiling by Hux’s ruse. He saw broken bottles and chair legs being used as weapons, as well as quite a few glints of metal. Blood spattered one wall in a wide arc. Reetha’s goons—identifiable by their state of undress—were slowly wading through the fray, blasters out but unable to get a clear shot.

Ren was in his element now, swinging the blade like he swung his saber, and the cantina’s patrons scattered out of their path when it became clear that Ren was more than willing to cut them down.

Most of them, anyway. A pair—crazy, or wanting a challenge— advanced on Ren with weapons of their own, one with a vibraknife and the other with a heavy club. Ren snarled and threw himself at the one with the club, grabbing him by the throat too fast for him to react and throwing him to the ground without breaking his stride. The knife-wielding man circled him cautiously, looking for an opening.

Distracted, Ren didn’t see that he’d given one of Reetha’s men a clear shot.

Hux pulled the single-shot from his boot, aimed, and fired before he realized what he’d done. His heart was pounding, adrenaline upon adrenaline, but his aim was steady. The half-dressed Twi’lek fell, a cauterized hole just off-center in his forehead.

He’d just saved Ren’s life.

He’d also just fired a blaster in a bar brawl, and he doubted he was the only one with a hidden backup. Even if he was, the whole room was against them, now.

Ren grabbed for him, the two of them staying low as they made for the weapons locker by the door. They were almost there, but Hux didn’t think they’d make it.

“Close your eyes!” he hissed, and pulled the pin from the stun grenade in his pocket. He waited a beat, and then tossed it behind him, closing his own eyes just in time. The sound of it was deafening, and the flash seared his eyes even through his eyelids.

Distantly, he heard another sound, the metal-on-metal screech of the door of the weapons-locker being wrenched off—Ren, presumably. Two steps, three, and they were there, grabbing their blasters, or blasters that looked like theirs, at least. Hux snatched up the TK-50 as well, and then they were out the door and into the street.

“This way!” Ren shouted, the sound echoing tinnily in Hux’s abused ears. His hand closed around Hux’s wrist, tugging him down an alley-passage he’d never seen before. Blood-spattered and bruised, hand in hand, they made their escape. There was a noise behind them, a whoosh like something burning, but they didn’t have time to look back.


End file.
